I Regret Nothing

So you're thinking about having a baby...

2011-08-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me assure you that nothing I have ever done has given me so much joy and delight. Having a baby to raise is magical: they are members of the family from day one, full of idiosyncrasy and intelligence, magical in their ability to apprehend the world around them for the first time and still really get it.

However, please don't assume that nothing will change. Here are a few honest truths.

1) Tell your partner you think you should see other people. Er, person. Small, demanding person that you will both love madly, derangedly, passionately. You will find yourself telling your child that s/he is your favorite person in the universe, right in front of your mate. You will kiss the bare skin of the baby a million times in the first month -- hundreds of times a day. You will dangle upon a toothless smile. This swoon of love is wonderful, but it will change your relationship with your partner; you will not have much time together, and if you do, you will speak in glowing tones about the new girl/guy in your life the whole time. Ouch. Look, this is truly nice, but you will find yourself getting misty about the times when you could spoon your lover's back and just listen to him/her breathe.

2) Your body will no longer be your own. Let alone the gross and magical things that happen to you while you are bringing the baby into the world, as I am sure you have thought about them -- and maybe you have come to terms with peeing yourself, etc. No. I am talking about all the other stuff. The hours spent expressing milk in one fashion or another. The long days without a shower or even sometimes brushing your teeth. Skin on skin, the baby's on yours, until you cannot stand another touch. Being poked, prodded, punched, slapped, pulled, tweaked, suckled, bitten, drooled on, sneezed on, vomited on. Having tiny handfuls of hair pulled out painfully or torn off. Not being able to wear your glasses without incurring a sharp, if clumsy, punch in the nose. Being used as furniture. Having your spider veins and moles picked at obsessively by an observant little ape with sharp fingers. Being kissed with a wide open and drooling maw. Getting slapped in the face with a drooly hand. Waiting to pee until you do actually pee yourself while bending down to change a diaper, all because you dare not disturb your progeny. Getting strong in the arms and back from lifting but flabby in the middle because you never go out anymore. Saying goodbye to sleep. Saying goodbye to your bed -- both for lovemaking (if you share a room with a bright-eyed light sleeper) and for sleep (since said light sleeper will often demand to cozy up with you, taking up the whole bed.)

3) You will change. What happened to the woman who couldn't abide irritating noisy toys, and who didn't want any plastic junk around? I seem to remember she never thought she'd eat anything that had been in another person's mouth. And she never, ever wanted to co-sleep with a child. She didn't like to be touched very much, because it made her skin sore. She was very clean about her person and thought she wouldn't let anybody ever, ever eat off her floor. She was definitely going to use cloth diapers all the time on her baby. She was going to make ALL the baby's food and was not going to humor picky eating. She hated the idea of a pacifier. She was going to give birth naturally, and to nurse the baby at her breast for two years. She knit, wrote fiction, made (and wore!) perfume, maintained her ties to the world. Her. Wow, where the hell did she go? Ah well, we don't need her. She didn't have a fucking clue what was going on in her world.

In her place, there's a woman in a milk-stained shirt and faded sweat pants, with unshaven legs and the distinct aroma of the unshowered. She has her ragged and torn hair up in a tight ponytail to avoid grabby hands: she looks like she trimmed her own bangs in desperation with nail scissors and the only product in them is baby drool and maybe a stray Cheerio. She's barefoot because she isn't going anywhere she doesn't have to go and because the bottoms of her shoes really aren't clean enough to bite, so they are exiled to the closet. Her toenail polish is chipped and has grown partly out; it's not that great a color anyway. Her knuckles are reddened and rough from washing up in hot water, and her nails are down to ragged stubs surrounded by hangnails, because they, too, are dry. Her unmoisturized arms are a solid mass of bruises, one with the very distinct impression of small toes.

She is grinning like a god-damned fool.

Bread, booze, and bragging...

2011-06-24T00:04:00.001-07:00

My dad and stepmom just visited us, and it was a really nice visit, marred only by us catching a plague that seems Of Biblical Proportion because Pat is teaching four classes plus handling family visit and because Fletcher is 7 months old. They were here for Father's Day, and we had a terrific barbecue-get-together thing. My stepsister came too, bringing her three sweet little kids (who were very excited to meet Fletch) and so all my dad's kids were there. Yay!

For this event, my stepmom made a tasty dessert. I noticed it bore some resemblance to Paula Deen's "gooey butter cakes" and was just on point of asking about it when she presented me a handwritten, water-stained recipe.

"It's your Grandma Rose's 'Tea Brag,'" she told me. "Your grandmother, Grandma Rose, well, I guess she called it a 'Tea Brag,' I think that's right... I think she'd like for you to have it, and make it, her Tea Brag, this is her recipe anyway."

I love my stepmother. She does have occasional fits of batting at the English language like a cat with a toy or a bird trying to get out through a screen door, though, so I abandoned the momentary impression that she'd had a stroke and was trying to say "tea bag" for some reason. I gave her the ol' "do what now?"

She handed me the recipe. Sure enough, it was labeled "Tea Brag." Huh. I've heard of buckles, slumps, bettys, grunts, pandowdys, etc. but never a "brag".... but wait, back in the murky depths of my teenage holiday memories I remember Grandma calling this cake a "brag." Weird.

So I did what any sane person would do: I told Pat about it in the car and told him about its weird, rednecky ingredients miraculously forming a squishy sort of fruity cake. He shuddered in horror. He actively dislikes many of the ingredients and has the luxury of being snobby about cake, since I bake most of ours from scratch, and I have a knack for cake (unlike pie crust!).

And then he googled it with his iPhone. In moments he told me, "It's a BRACK. Tea brack. It's an Irish recipe."

Every recipe for Tea Brack that I found bears zero resemblance to Tea Brag, but I think it really is the inspiration. The thing is, the recipes for Tea Brack are so mad, so completely crazytown, that I had to make one.

I dug out my Irish cookbook (yes, I have one.) And that's just what I did -- I made Tea Brack. It's a boozy sort of fruitcake/bread pudding affair. Yes, make one. It's awesome in a kind of I Have Gone Mad And Will Now Cook With Booze-Soaked Prunes kind of way.

Anyway, for your delectation, here are both recipes. I am doing you the courtesy of halving the Tea Brack recipe because honestly, nobody needs two huge bread pans full of this stuff. A little goes a looooong way and having eaten one slice, I feel like I've had a reasonably stiff drink. Yikes.

Tea Brack, the way I made it (only halved because the original recipe lied to me and seriously, you do not want two of these the first time you make them)

ONE POUND of dried fruit, mixed of whatever. I used prunes, unsulfured apricots, dried cherries, raisins, and some dried cherries I had around from another project.
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 cup Irish whiskey (but I used Southern Comfort because I am a redneck and that's the whiskey I had)
1 cup strong black tea, preferably Irish Breakfast but I used double bergamot Earl Grey
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon "apple pie spice" (cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice evidently. I got lazy and used pumpkin pie spice -- which I had -- and a little extra cinnamon and nutmeg)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 eggs (you could probably just use two and use a wee bit more flour. I won't tell. The original recipe makes an ass-ton and uses 3 eggs, so I am doing you a favor here.)

Mix the fruit and sugar. Pour hot tea and room temperature whiskey over, and leave to soak overnight. I forgot to cut up the fruit into reasonable sized pieces, so after soaking, I tried to cut it up in the processor; this made the part I did this to resemble mincemeat or a coarse, lumpy puree, so I gave up and used half un-cut fruit and half minced soaked fruit. Don't be like me. Cut your fruit before you soak it, unless you forget and are like me after all.

Take time to giggle fiendishly about how preposterous this recipe is. Consider using just dried apples and uncrystallized candied ginger next time. Consider what all this dried fruit and booze will do to your insides. Stop considering.

Mix in eggs, flour, spice, and baking powder. Turn mixture into a well-greased 9 X 5" loaf pan (that's the big fat loaf pan -- seriously, I have four and only one is that big). Bake for an hour at 350.

Online sources will tell you that this is nicer when underbaked a bit. They fucking lie. It will be mooshy even when it is properly done. Bake it for the full hour. Hell, give it another 5 minutes. Maybe more. Keep an eye on it, it's trying to get away with something.

Allow to cool on a rack in tin for a few minutes before turning out onto rack and cooling some more.

Serve a nice boozy slice slightly warm with butter on top. Ahhh. Weird. But tasty.

Tea Brag, as written by my stepmom, following Grandma Rose's recipe

Butter 9 X 13 bake dish
Pour in 1 can cherry pie mix
Pour over 1 can crushed pineapple
Next sprinkle 1 yellow cake mix over fruit & "mix" slightly [I love the quotes here]
Sprinkle some coconut over mix
Layer chopped nuts
Drizzle 1/2 c melted margarine over entire mixture
Bake 325 until done = 35 minutes

Believe it or not, this turns out pretty festive. Tasty but very sweet and gooey and sort of undefined. I'll leave my feelings for margarine and cake mix out of it, and Pat's feelings about coconut and nuts in cake... really, you should make one some time when you are feeling lazy and sweet-toothy and have to make dessert for a crowd. It's fancy. Faaaaaancy.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

Seasonally inappropriate corn casserole

2011-06-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

So because I do an incredible lot of baking in summer, because evidently my inner thermostat or common sense sensor is broken, I was making a cake. And it overflowed the pie pan it is prepared in. And even though I thought that this pan was bigger than the one that had previously PERFECTLY held the same recipe, it was smaller and I don't fail like this often. But it overflowed and sent berries and cake and sugar onto the floor of my oven and it burned like blazes. (As an experienced baker, I am embarrassed. Seppuku with a pie wedge will probably follow.) So...

I tried an oven cleaning tip I picked up on the Internet. Now, Sally Homemaker, I am not. But I got tired of setting off the fire alarm every time I bake anything above 350 degrees -- which, as you recall, is often in the summer (partially because I know I can open doors and windows to let the smoke and fumes out in summer, whereas in freezing weather it is less practical) -- so I looked up oven cleaning tips. A year ago. And continued to just unplug the alarm and fling it across the room when it went off every time I baked, until the boil-over.

The fire alarm issue was the result of me setting the oven on fire three Thanksgivings ago when I made candied bacon to top a dish. Candied bacon is delicious, but it's baked atop parchment paper. I unfortunately stuck it in the oven right after turning off the broiler (which cooks above Fahrenheit 451) and boy, does pork fat and brown sugar and paper burn bright! Got to show Pat you can put out kitchen fires with baking soda, so I managed to impress him despite rookie firestarter behavior. Hat trick!

So back to the boilover. It was foul and left a thick burned mass reminiscent of those awful Fourth of July "fireworks" "snakes" that just smell bad and grow and grow. Yuck. It necessitated action.

Here's the thing: put baking soda on it and keep baking. Later, scrape out the majority. Mix baking soda and water, put in a cheap garden mister and mist the oven just before every time you preheat. It'll pull the burnt grunge and ash off the walls and you can just mop it out later with a damp sponge. No elbow grease, baby!

Having accomplished this and still astonished at the efficiency of the operation, I decided to make corn casserole. It's rednecky wonderful and I jazzed it up a bit to pretend it's Mexican because I am pretty sure Pat preferred the quesadilla option for dinner and was just being polite.

Rednecky Pretend It's Mexican Corn Casserole

*1 1/2 sleeves saltines, because you know you bought a box to eat chocolate frosting on, but you don't have any more frosting and, you know, buying more for stale crackers would make you totally hate yourself
*2 cans cream style corn, which you totally have in the cupboard even though you have no idea why the hell you keep buying it
*half a can of evaporated milk, same shopping drill as the corn
*one small can of minced green New Mexico chiles, because you're guilty about the quesadillas after all
*a pitiful looking hunk of cheese, grated, to give a quesadilla feel to the thing (yeah, sure it will!) and because fuck it, the original recipe I learned in the 70s used a lot of butter and cheese won't make this worse for me. Hell, corn was considered a vegetable instead of a starch back then! Cats were dogs! It was madness!
*a heavy pinch of cumin seeds to make it more Mexican-ier
*a heavy shake of black pepper because corn loves pepper
*shortening, because I don't grease pans with anything else

Grease your casserole dish. Poke some small pinholes in your saltine sleeves, and crush saltines beyond recognition. Mix corn, chiles, cumin, pepper, and corn. Layer cracker crumbs with corn mixture several times (first layer will be crackers). Drizzle some evaporated milk over the top. You can dot this with butter if you want. Bake at 400 in your newly cleaned oven until crusty and set; believe it or not, this really will kind of set up without an egg, but you can add one if you want insurance. Enjoy!

Fourteen days

2011-06-05T10:21:00.001-07:00

Fourteen days ago, Fletcher figured out how to crawl.... sort of.
Seven days ago, Fletcher figured out how to crawl better.
Five days ago, Fletcher figured out how to sit up from a lying position.
Four days ago, Fletcher figured out how to stand up unassisted.
Yesterday, Fletcher figured out how to say "Mama!" and "Daddy!" He may have been doing it for a while, but he is understandable now.
And he finally figured out, over the last couple days, how to eat non-pureed soft foods. He enjoyed tastes of cake, chili cheese fries, and beer cheese yesterday (and let me tell you, that's an awesome food day for mom, too.)

Life happens fast. So fast!

Group guest post at Perfume-Smellin' Things blog

2011-05-02T08:26:00.001-07:00

Spring favorites! Enjoy!

Healthy philosophy

2011-04-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why my brain has been sifting the aphorisms that serve as linchpins of my personal philosophy, but it has. These little gems may or may not form anything coherent when assembled, but they add up to a bit of my own operating manual. And hey, after reading a handful of them, you may understand why I'm incoherent myself.

A lot of these seem to be about anger management. Weird! I didn't know I thought about it so much.

DON'T QUIT ON A BAD DAY
If you quit something you've committed to, be sure you leave on a high note. You'll be likelier to feel as if you're really finished, and you won't be making a mistake. If you quit on a bad day, you might cheat yourself out of some good ones. I got this one from a pumping/breastfeeding forum the other day and thought it was brilliant.

DON'T GO TO BED MAD
My darling Grandma Red told me this when I was a kid, and it has stuck with me. If a spat can be settled before you sleep on it, it doesn't simmer in your consciousness all night and leave resentment in its wake. This piece of advice has led to a lot of late-night letter-writing and exhausting postmortem conversations, but I believe it has also saved me from some long-lasting anger issues. And it allows you to wake up fresh and happy in the morning.

MAKE BREAD WHEN YOU'RE ANGRY
Another Grandma Red-ism. Punching down the dough, shaping the warm elastic mixture, watching it rise, breathing the heavenly smell of homemade bread... it's therapy. It's a plus that you end up with a lovingly produced, special, homey gift to offer your loved ones; you can literally turn your negative feelings into positive ones as you work through them in productive, contemplative labor. Just be sure that this isn't the only time you make bread!

DON'T CUDDLE GRUDGES
I think I lifted the phrase "cuddle a grudge" from a science fiction writer -- Robert Heinlein or David Gerrold, maybe. The thing is, a grudge doesn't do you any good. Cherish the best in your life, not the worst -- feel free to dismiss grudges before they taint your outlook.

GROW TOGETHER, NOT APART
When I told Grandma Red that I was getting married, she was the only person who was unabashedly delighted. Our parents thought we were too young and it showed. She sat down with me and held my hand, and gave me a good talking-to including lots of advice. I told her how delightful it was that she was happy about the upcoming nuptials rather than shocked because of our age, and she said, "Honey, it is true that you are young. You probably have some growing up to do, both of you. But if you grow together and not apart, your marriage will only be the stronger." So we share hobbies, run errands together instead of separately when possible, share social activism and volunteer together, and hang out together a lot. Guess what? It works. We're incredibly codependent and some friends treat us as if we're indistinguishable -- we're not, but we do have a lot in common (just as the Emperor had foreseen.)

EXERCISE IF YOU ARE FEELING DOWN (e.g. "Go outside!" or "Let the sun in!")
It works. If you're having a blue day, get out into the sunshine. Our brains are wired such that natural colors center us and make us feel better. It's convenient... guess where there are lots of natural colors? Outside! Go outside, take a walk, do some exercise or chores, and your body will feel better... and so will your brain, and mood. At the very least, you smelled some fresh air and got yourself a little endorphin high.

GET UP AND PUT ON A LITTLE LIPSTICK
Another Grandma Red-ism, which she annoyed me by uttering every time she babysat me when I was sick. She's shoo me out of bed, make me wash my face and do my hair and put on lipstick under the pretext that I'd feel better if I did. It always irritated me that it really did work. Now, I rarely wear cosmetics other than lotion and colorless lip balm, but even those help. Something about the physical activity of getting ready, or about knowing that you are presentable, makes you feel nice. When my doula brought me lotion and lip balm, and my mom brought me new nighties, when I was in labor and hooked up to IVs and stuff -- boy, did I feel better. Even better when the nurses finally let me up to shower after 3 days.

BREATHE DEEPLY
I used to be very into meditation and believed I was nourishing my spirit and body by inhaling "prana," which I visualize as little spirit krill that live in air. Now I believe in deep breathing for other reasons as well: oxygenation, stress relief, a way to buy a few moments of thinking time before making a decision or undertaking something risky. It also significantly affects my blood pressure -- for the better.

THINK POSITIVE AND AFFIRM
I go round and round with this one. On the one hand, I detest the neutering of expression in order to speak no evil; an otherwise excellent former boss was incapable of saying things plainly. She couldn't say anything negative, even when the situation was very clear cut -- and wouldn't tolerate it in her employees. We weren't permitted to say something was a mistake when it could be termed a "teachable moment" and so on. But... if you pep-talk yourself, think positively, and husband your energies, you will be happier and more effective. So there's something to this -- just try not to extend it so far that you sound like a cultist.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, KEEP QUIET
This, I am NOT conflicted about. I have a guilty pleasure: reading an online advice column twice a week (and the ensuing wrangle in the comments section). Facebook is to etiquette as wedding photography is to small claims court... people fight about it all the time. It all boils down to the Golden Rule; don't be a jerk. This is more important than ever in the era of social media and remotely stored persistence of commentary.

WEAR YOUR POWER COLORS
When you go out, feel like you look good. Wear colors you like, bright ones if you dare. People always compliment me when I'm dressed in my loudest colors and I am just learning that I should listen to them. (Also, having a baby means I've turned up in lots and lots of pictures... and I've discovered which clothes make me look like a feature on People of Wal-Mart. I am trying to get rid of those outfits.)

DON'T SAVE THE FANCY OLIVES FOR A SPECIAL OCCASION
I found this on a cooking blog and promptly forgot where I got it, but it's marvelous. I wish I could say who had said it first, but it's too good not to share because I can't reference it. Are you ready? Don't save the good wine for later. Don't save the fancy olives. Eat them, drink them, don't try to have your cake and eat it too (but later.) Eat your freakin' cake already! Miserly behavior (other than saving money) is crazy, hoarding activity. Take joy in the little pleasures that present themselves to you in life. Likewise, wear your expensive perfume, and your fancy clothes, and eat off of the good dishes.

WHEN YOU ARE CUTTING CARROTS, CUT THE CARROTS
A Zen cooking show taught me this. Take a break from multitasking and just do one thing. Meditative, mindful activity is well-spent activity. It is restorative to the mind and fills the soul.

SEE THE "GEESH," BE THE "GEESH"
Another nudge toward mindful living, hailing from the first years of our birding hobby. For reasons I won't go into here, we call goslings "geeshes." They are the epitome of tranquility -- eager, bright-eyed, never stressed or worried. If you're looking at them, put yourself in the same frame of mind. If you're not looking at them, why not? Google makes birdwatching easy. :) But it doesn't have to be geeshes, it can be baby ocelots, anteaters, or humans. The women's magazines often run blurbs saying that to look at cute images helps increase workers' productivity -- and I think it's because we dismiss all the drama and fuss that makes us ineffective when we reorient toward that innocent, loving, unworried state we see in young animals and humans.

And, as always, let me nudge you toward the Parable of the Bitter Tea in the Principia Discordia. Diluting something bad leaves you with something weaker -- and still bad. Start afresh when you need to; you'll be glad you did. Just, you know, don't quit on a bad day. :)

Eek!

2011-04-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

There really are a couple blog entries between these recipes, but they're invisible. You see, I never finished them or hit "publish." So I'll get them out in the next few days.

In the meantime, Happy Easter, or whatever spring holiday woke you up with a smile on your face. :)

But make this within the next few days or you'll be sad that you took so long to do so once you finally get around to it. Seriously. Do you have eggs, milk, honey, and flour? Make this.

Don't be scared to pull out the fancy honey for this either. You can really taste it.

This delicious dish is like a baked custard mated with a Yorkshire Pudding, right on the nexus of milk & honey. It IS milk and honey held together with eggs and just enough flour to allow it to puff and brown on the edges.

Finnish Pancake

3 eggs
2 1/8 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
scant 1/4 cup honey
3/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons butter
(You could optionally flavor this with vanilla extract or beans, or with nutmeg, but why? The honey is soooo good in this.)

Heat oven to 425 and put your 10' iron skillet in it to heat up. In the meantime, beat the eggs until homogeneous, then mix the eggs, milk, salt, and honey until well amalgamated. Beat in the flour until no lumps remain.

Remove the skillet from the oven and drop the butter into it. It will melt and foam. Swirl pan so that the sides are buttered too and the whole bottom of the pan has been slicked with foamy butter. Pour in the custard mixture and put it all back into the oven.

Leave it alone until it is puffed, browned on the curled edges, and set in the middle (a knife inserted in the center will come out "clean.") There will be a little lake of butter on top, so be careful.

Serve immediately, because it looks most impressive that way, with additional honey and fresh fruit piled atop it. But you won't be able to eat it until it cools just slightly, because it has the immediate aspect of lava.

Should serve 3 or 4, but the two of us ate it all by ourselves (again.)

Oh. My.

Emily, so far as I know, honey is all right for an expectant mama. But remember that baby can't have any until he or she is a year old for fear of botulism toxin. This will be an issue. Fletcher wanted to remind me today that this should properly serve 3 or 4 people, and one of them is HIM.

Recipe contest over at Food 52!

2011-04-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

I saw a contest on Food 52, one of my favorite recipe sites and food communities, for "your best dumplings," and could not resist getting involved. Chochoyotes! Oh yes, chochoyotes!

So I entered: Cheesy chochoyotes with chicken and enchilada sauce is the recipe, and my name there is Literary Equivalent. Please don't be shy about stopping in to vote for me, if you tried the recipe a couple weeks ago when I posted it on this blog and liked it.

I changed the default cheese to cotija. Why? Because I am obsessed with cotija cheese now. Here's another quick recipe for you, if you're not skurred of carbs...

Potatoes OMNOMNOM

1 largish or 2 small Yukon gold potato for each diner
2 teaspoons salted butter for each diner
coarse salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste
1/2 to 1 ounce cotija cheese for each diner

1. Get up early and decide that you don't want to cook anything complicated. Wash and pierce potatoes and microwave on "potato" setting until done. (You could oven-bake these for even more omnomnom, I think.)
2. Discover that what you thought was plain yogurt is actually a pink-and-black science experiment, and that you don't have hummus right now. Split potatoes and put butter and salt and pepper on them to taste. Don't forget to grumble about not having hummus.
3. Remember that you have cotija cheese in the fridge that you meant to use in more esquites. Wonder why you haven't made more esquites, as they were so delicious when you did. When cheese turns out to be fresh, add to potatoes.
4. Eat. OH MY GOD. How is cotija cheese so good on potatoes?
5. End up buying more cotija cheese just to eat on potatoes.

Baby love

2011-03-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

At the risk of overloading some of you with baby baby baby all the time, I thought I'd share some cuteness.

Fletcher is "eating" "solid" "food" now. Against my halfhearted objections*, he started with a binding starch (organic brown rice cereal) and, of course, was bound up by it. Then we tried carrots, avocadoes (not terribly popular, but maybe that was because I didn't puree it as silky as the other things), and peaches. So far everything is from scratch.

Another of baby merriment:

Daddy singing "Who Let The Dogs Out," which gets a laugh - Every. Single. Time. (Even if Mommy sings it.) This one's relatively recent.

* Objections only stated half-heartedly and overruled by his pediatrician, who gave us a VERY traditional timetable for introducing foods: cereal, then veg (yellow, then green), then fruit, then, much later, proteins. Frankly, this is at odds with the latest in pediatric nutrition. And it's silly to think that they won't want vegetables if they've had the sweet taste of fruit; breastmilk is lots and lots sweeter than any fruit I've tasted. (Think Yoohoo without the chocolate flavor.)

3000 words.

2011-03-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Twinkie Cake, for my mom. And talking about mom.

2011-03-28T22:22:00.001-07:00

That's right, folks, I signed contracts to become an insurance agent -- not an employee, but a business owner and agent in her own right. While that may not get me out of the "I can afford dry beans and ramen, but not together" situation I am in now within the next few weeks or months, it is an exciting path for the future. If you know Californians in need of insurance advice or quotes, for Heaven's sake, send them to me.

Life has been crazy. I have hardly sat down in the last 10 days or so unless it was because a baby demanded that I lie down JUST SO beside him and NOT MOVE until he was really, really asleep. Unexpected little events (and big, expected ones, like a friend's memorial service) have been popping every day.

On Friday, I realized that I had neglected to ask anyone to babysit while I went to my friend's memorial. I called Mom, but she told me she was busy, having been invited to a special event (a gambling tournament!) She said she'd rather babysit Fletch, but I told her to GO to her event and let me find another sitter. My good buddy and doula April said yes, but while I was on the phone with her (only 10 minutes!) I got 3 call-backs from Mom. When I finally caught her call, she told me breathlessly and in tears that she had canceled her event and please, please, please to let her babysit. So I did what any good daughter would do...

I scolded her gently and made her call her concierge to get re-added. And I offered her a couple hours with the baby if she wanted them in the morning, when we were getting ready. I had to: she was weeping and wailing that I had only just started letting her babysit (untrue: she babysat while we did Christmas shopping when Fletch was under a month old) and now she had messed it up (apparently by making me an idiot who doesn't call for childcare until the night before an important event she has known about for a month... I mean, c'mon.)

When we went by her place, she did what she usually does: offered us every object that had touched the baby without raising his objection -- blankets, toys, pillows... and... the laundry basket. (I reassured her that he would see them again at her home.)

The laundry basket, you ask?

The laundry basket. She had made a nest in it of blankets and toys, and had propped him up to sit in and watch TV with her. Evidently it was popular with the little guy, but there are no pictures to prove it. (Yet!)

I love my mom. She loves us to distraction, and/but is highly impractical and sometimes unrealistic. It always seems to involve laundry baskets.

Case in point, when we lived in Chicago and she found out that we lived in a walk-up with an outdoor stairwell to the laundry room, and that it was often snowy and icy in Chicago, she designed and recommended in great detail a system of ropes, pulleys, and laundry baskets, so that I didn't have to risk slipping on the icy stairs while moving my laundry and groceries up- and downstairs. Never mind that we didn't own the building and our super probably wouldn't like the changes (let alone the landlord!) -- she insisted that it was a building improvement that our neighbors would deeply appreciate.

Yeah.

I hear the Rube Goldberg music from a dozen cartoons in my head when she starts talking. But I love this weird personality feature, and I love my mom.

So, for mom... Twinkie Cake.

Despite my culinary hate-on for White Stuff (that greasy hydrogenated-shortening-based filling inside Twinkies, Oreos, and their ilk), I come from a family of avowed junk food junkies. My mom particularly likes knock-offs of Twinkies ("Banana Twins" in particular, but any knock-off will do) and all other things fakey-banana-ey, such as banana Runts, banana Laffy Taffy, and those evil orange Circus Peanuts candies -- but only if they have been left in a car's glove box in the hot sun until they properly approach the texture of pemmican. Last week, I decided to surprise her/cheer her up by making a Twinkie Cake. So... I invented one for her.

This recipe could be as simple as "make your favorite white cake, yellow cake, or pound cake recipe -- from scratch only please, cake mixes are for chumps -- and add a teaspoon of banana flavoring and a half teaspoon of vanilla extract in lieu of whatever flavorings it normally calls for. Frost with homemade vanilla icing." Because Twinkies are just banana cake encasing a creamy white filling, it will taste authentic. Neat, huh?

I, however, did NOT use my favorite cake recipe. I experimented with one of those too-good-to-be-true recipes I found online with like 4 ingredients. The cake was excellently textured, but dry and firm. It would make an excellent cake for decoration, but I'm going to fall back to one of my favorites in the future.

Here is the cake as I made it last week. It can be better, but it was pretty good, really; I just like my cakes spongy and moister than this turned out to be.

Oh, and you could totally customize this into a Dreamsicle cake instead by using orange flavoring and maybe by adding in (or subbing-in for part of the liquid) some thawed frozen orange juice concentrate.

Twinkie Cake (adapted from Scott Osman's Simple White Cake and Pioneer Woman's That's The Best Frosting I Ever Had.

(The addition of more sugar and oil, and/or the addition of two egg yolks and omission of a whole egg, would make this cake a lot moister. Just sayin'.)

1 1/2 cups white sugar (you could make this two cups)
3/4 cup butter (you could make this one cup)
3 eggs (or 2 eggs plus 2 yolks)
1 1/2 teaspoons banana flavoring
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (do not do as I did and sub in cake flour!)
2 1/2 generous teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk

Cream sugar and butter together for a pathologically long time. It helps to have a stand mixer and an irascible four-month-old; walk off to deal with the baby's complaints and forget to turn off the machine for 5-10 minutes. Come back and add the eggs/yolks, one at a time, and mix until light and well incorporated. Beat in flavorings and then add dry ingredients. Mix in milk and spread batter (which should be thick) into greased and floured 13 X 9 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until a pick inserted in the middle comes up dry. Don't overbake.

Let cake cool and frost with a batch of Pioneer Woman's finest. Do me a favor, though, and use superfine sugar (the baker's special stuff) instead of normal white sugar for this frosting recipe. You can cream butter and sugar together for a million years and still have grit if the sugar isn't superfine. (NOT powdered, that's the wrong stuff.)

This is tooth-achingly sweet, but perfect for your Twinkie junkies.

Love you guys. Let me know if you find something amazing to do with a laundry basket this week. ;)

Chicken and cheesy chochoyotes

2011-03-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, YUM.

This is mostly enchilada sauce, but who cares? Delicious. This will serve two very generously.

First, put a whole chicken breast (both halves) into the oven to bake. I baked mine about 20-25 minutes at 350, after salting and peppering liberally, in a nonstick-sprayed pie plate.

Then, mix 1 cup of masa harina with 3/4 cup water, a healthy sprinkle of garlic powder and/or cumin, a pinch of salt, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Knead and let rest 30 minutes

Cut about an ounce or two of cheese (I used sharp cheddar) into little cubelets.

Enchilada sauce:

2 T butter
1 onion, cut in thin half-moons
3 cloves garlic, smashed and sliced or chopped
4 T flour
1 big chipotle chili (dried), ground to smithereens in a coffee grinder
1 T ancho chili powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp cumin seeds
the liquid that drains off the chicken while it bakes
3 cups water
1 small (15-oz.) can of diced tomatoes
salt to taste

Melt butter and brown onion lightly in it until golden. Add garlic and flour, and stir until the roux has turned softly golden. Add spices and liquid and simmer, stirring frequently, until rich and delicious. Turn down to a bare simmer.

Make little balls of the masa mixture enclosing nuggets of cheese. Scatter into enchilada sauce and cover, simmering for 5 minutes or so. Add sliced breasts of chicken, scatter more cheese on top if desired, and simmer another 5-10 minutes.

This makes enough for two HUGE portions plus leftover sauce. You could serve four if you doubled the chicken and masa dumplings, with the same amount of sauce (no need to double it!)

Enjoy!

Milk-makin' Muffins

2011-03-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

These are not health food, but they do provide healthy nutrients and are loaded with lactogenics.

1/4 cup ground flaxseeds
3/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cups oat flour (or grind them yourself in the blender)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas, very ripe
3 T melted butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp rum flavoring
a few grates of nutmeg

Blend dry ingredients and wet ingredients, separately, then mix until just blended. Fold in nuts and chocolate chips. Put into well greased muffin tin and bake for 18-20 minutes at 400 degrees. These are really tasty.

Lactogenic foods...

2011-03-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm experiencing the normal hormonal shift-back-to-normal and subsequent milk production drop that everyone seems to do around the fourth month postpartum, so I have been looking into lactogenic foods.

There are lots of terrific recipes (well, versions of the same terrific recipe or two) out there for lactogenic sweets: Lactation Cookies and Lactation Muffins. But what if I don't want to gorge on sweets?

Many cultures, particularly Asian cultures if the Internet is representative of the global population, have special foods (often soups) for new mothers. Many of those foods are explicitly intended to increase milk supply. In my own experience, chicken soup, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and beer have been widely recommended.

But what if I want to buck tradition and just make something to eat that might help me? Fine. I'll make up my own recipes. And maybe someday I'll name them something that doesn't sound totally gross. :)

EVERY single item in this soup is considered lactogenic. Ta-daaaah!

Lovely Lactogenic Lentil Soup

1/2 large sweet potato, cut into small dice
1 cup red lentils
2 1/2 cups water
3 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
3 tablespoons ginger, minced fine or grated
a couple pinches of sea salt
2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast (which IS deactivated brewers' yeast IINM)
1 15-oz can coconut milk (I like Chaokoh)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons garam masala (okay fine, not every ingredient of garam masala is lactogenic, but more are than aren't.)
pumpkin seeds for sprinkling atop

Simmer sweet potato and lentils in water (or I suppose you could use chicken broth or veggie broth) until soft, adding garlic and ginger when lentils begin to get soft. Add coconut milk and seasonings, and adjust seasoning to taste. You could puree this and it'd be prettier; I intended to but ended up liking it chunky.

This soup would benefit from sprinklings of cilantro and lime juice, but since I was doing an art-project recipe of ALL lactogenic offerings, I left them out. Next time I will add a touch of acid, probably lime juice. If I have cilantro, I will probably add it, too.

Scatter pumpkin seeds atop for healthy minerals and enjoy!

I can't vouch for how effective this is, yet, but it is certainly tastier than the oatmeal I had the other day featuring nutritional yeast, barley malt syrup, flax, and poppy seeds. Yecch! I like all those ingredients, just... not together. So I went back to the drawing board, and was rewarded with some unseasonably rich soup, as above.

Nerdy giggles and adorable shrieks

2011-03-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

2011-03-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

When I was a tween and young teen, my mother and I embarked upon a quest for our Holy Grail of perfumes. We had both been wearing vanilla extract dabbed on our wrists and behind our ears. Then, I think because of an industry reaction to popularized rumors/urban legends of high school kids drinking vanilla extract as a quasi-legal cocktail (ha! At those prices?!), vanilla extract got very sticky from added glycerin and such.

Love's (the people who make Baby Soft) helped us out by making a short-lived seasonal fragrance, French Vanilla. It was glorious -- just the aura of an ice-cream parlor or a bakery. There was an ice-cream cone on the label, and it came only in spray canisters that produced a fine mist. It was a stocking stuffer for me, but after she smelled it, Mom couldn't resist borrowing it every time she went out. We bought more. We bought out all the stock in our local drugstores and K-Mart, in fact.

And then it disappeared from the shelves. I started wearing some violet fragrance that good friends now assure me was vile, and Mom retreated to her Babe.

We counted down the months until Christmas, hoping it would be released again. We'd buy a case!

It was never produced again. (Now I know that changing safety regulations made it impossible to produce -- it supposedly had dangerous levels of coumarin or something like that.) We mourned and every year for at least a decade, we checked the shelves.

And we went our separate ways, perfume-wise.

You see, I remained a foodie perfumista with a definite sweet tooth. Mom has violent body chemistry that turns most such fragrances into an unpleasantly bitter, urine-tinged plastic scent -- and she likes her fragrances complex and greenly floral. Cacharel's Anais Anais was the only one we agreed on in my teen years.

The next fragrance to rock BOTH of our worlds was Skin Musk.

My mom came home one day and told me, with eyes aglow, about this beautiful, confident, sexy woman she had followed around until she'd worked up the courage to ask her what she was wearing. The woman just smiled and whispered, "just Skin." And my mom said her response had been, "well, your skin smells better than mine."

I wanted instantly to be this kind of powerhouse of feminine power, or to date her. I could see her in my mind's eye, just as Mom had described her: her flawless ebony complexion, her thrilling whisper, her enigmatic words, her feline gaze, her perfect fashion from demure coiffure to expensive pumps.

But we had no fucking idea what she was talking about.

Lo and behold, it was maybe two months later that I stumbled across a little disc-shaped bottle at the drugstore. It was sold sealed, there was no tester, and it had the word "Skin" stenciled on it. I bought it unsniffed, and found, somewhat to my chagrin, that it was a perfume oil so strong it had to be massaged into the skin in only the minutest quantities so as not to leave a visible slick.

I didn't know how to cope with a perfume oil. Perfume came as a spray, in my world. In fact, I was a five-or-six-sprayer, and prone to big ugly sharp-toothed 80s florals like Diana von Furstenburg's Tatiana. And I had big hair feathered back and wore blue eyeshadow. Yes, I was a child of the eighties.

The idea of a scent that had to be caressed intimately into the tender, ritual sites for perfuming oneself was intoxicating. Wrists, behind the ears, the hollow of the throat, the inside of the elbow, the cleavage, the navel, and -- because I had read about it as a lovely place to apply perfume so that the scent wafted up softly all day -- the tops of the feet. To apply the fragrance was almost foreplay.

And it was a sexy scent, aptly named. Skin. Oh, my.

The scent itself is rich and deceptively simple: a thumping base chord of sandalwood, vanilla, and powdery nitro-musks, all intertwined, with a coriander-inflected floral opening so understated that it melted into the base. It didn't evolve on my skin so much as colonize it, remaining faithful and true all day. It rises like humidity after a hot summer rain from the skin. And I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that it's a skin-scent that clings close to the wearer, enveloping her in a robe of fragrance, rather than a big bright spray. (That said, other people who share an elevator with the wearer will definitely smell her!)

There's a lot of moaning in perfumista circles about the reformulation of this fragrance -- and about a lot of fragrances. People blame Parfums de Coeur, who bought the scent from Bonne Bell, for mucking with it. The fact of the matter is that it was an 80s musk fragrance, and, as such, it HAD to be reformulated because its main component was outlawed. But I personally think the reformulation of Skin was masterful, and that it lost relatively little of its original nitro-musk personality when it was converted to a synth-musk. (This may be because I, like over a quarter of the population, am anosmic to a huge preponderance of musk scents -- I may simply not care about the relevant feature of the perfume.)

To me, this scent is and always was about sandalwood. And the sandalwood it recalls to my mind is a gorgeous, intricately carved vintage sandalwood fan my grandmother gave me, each of its sticks pierced elaborately and growing more resonantly fragrant with each passing year. The musk elevates the sandalwood for deeper scrutiny, like the silk thread binding together the sticks and forming the jade-green tassel that adorns it. The powdery-tonka and vanilla scents are ubiquitous boudoir scents for me, as I was (and always will be, in my secret heart) the kind of gourmand girly-girl who hoards body powder and extract bottles and chunks of soft amber in little wooden boxes.

The scent now comes in a range of styles, from the body-spray metal canister that reminds me mournfully of my lost French Vanilla scent to the little glass disc that I first treasured. My favorite way to put this scent on is still the oil; the scent is truest and most beautiful in that format, and the ritual of soft, short caresses in tender corners of the anatomy is intimately beguiling.

Exhausted!

2011-03-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

I smell like sour milk, I have a stain on my third top of the day (hence the previous comment), and I am hot and cranky and tired. Fletch has a cold or something, and is most definitely teething, and has been a tiny, bald slave-driver. Pat caught the cold and is just as exhausted as I am, maybe more. But life is good overall and I have not disappeared forever.

I have been spinning some gorgeous fiber (a blend of merino wool, soy silk, and bamboo IIRC) dyed in deep greens, blues, and purples. It's fun to spin in multicolors; the cop that is building up is irregular and streaky, forming a sort of unreliable colorway with some twists of color-on-color. I don't know what I'm going to ply it with to keep up the drama. Maybe a metallic thread, maybe mercerized cotton, maybe some black bamboo or golden soy silk. Fletch allows me this hobby: he is mesmerized by the drawing out of the bright twist of fiber and the steady descent of the whorl, and loves to watch me wind the singles onto the spindle.

What else? Oh, I have acquired some Skin Musk so that I can review it for Heather... and will post that review when next I have time to think (and don't smell too much like milk to process aromas.)

Hugs all 'round.

To those of you who are childless by choice and humor my obsession with my baby anyway, thank you. You don't know how it touches me to see you casually demonstrate that you know his name, or to hear from you on unrelated issues, even as I know I may've grown a little more boring. I love you guys more than ever.

Things you will want for your newborn

2011-03-02T17:50:00.001-08:00

I know that posts saying "you cannot live without this thing" are silly, but these are my favorite baby items. Have a friend's baby shower coming up? Expecting? Please consider adding these to your list. No joke. And no compensation is being received for my endorsements; this is a spontaneous "OMG I love this stuff" post.

The names for these items are mine, but I will try to direct you to where you can find 'em.

The $2 Garanimals ball from Wal-Mart: here's some discussion.

Babies can hold on to this and enjoy trying to cram it in their mouths. No joke, this is a huge favorite of Fletch's and has been since he was less than a month old. I keep a spare, because he has been able since he was 2 months old to chuck the darn thing out of his carrier and into the stratosphere, evidently. There's a $5 version that includes rattles and garishly clashing colors, which is wonderful once baby is big enough (by 3 months.) I hear you may be able to find these listed as "O-balls." That fact alone should make you run out and buy one. Or two, for when the baby throws one out of the carrier and you have to say "oh, balls." (And these are great cat toys as well.)

The Fisher-Price Miracle Seahorse: link here

This thing is the snooze button that works on babies. If baby is restless and you need 5 minutes more sleep, or to run heat up some milk, or to pee before you change the diaper -- touch its tummy and the glow and music will keep baby soothed for those 5 minutes. I am amazed. It's like magic. Supposedly, it will keep being fun for him until he's 3 or so. Gosh, I hope so.

The Donut: link here

This is like a bean bag custom tailored to your baby's shape, only it's firm. They can't use it long -- Fletch outgrew his at about 13 lbs. because he learned to slouch dangerously. But it's terrific for their comfort while hanging out watching the parental units chillin' by the TV.

That Thing Uncle Dave Got Him For Christmas: link here

It's a teether. It's a rattle. It's very grabbable. It's a little heavy until your youngster is 3 1/2 or 4 months old, but then... oh, then, THEN it starts to hold their attention. And it's interesting for the parental units to noodle around with, too. Seriously, look at it! How cool is this thing?!

Baby Einstein Gift Set: link here

Grandpa and Grandma LouAnn got him this extravagant set for Christmas. Well, not EXACTLY this set, but a similar set (Baby Einstein seems to swap out hot toys for other hot toys). Every toy in the set is quality and made with a baby in mind. However, the specific toys you really want from the set (so far) are the goofy, cartoonish-looking red bird that plays beautifully recorded birdsongs when you squeeze its tummy, and the hard plastic light-up radio thing with the caterpillar on the handle, which plays numerous kid-able songs that you WON'T hear on every other noisy-toy you own. Wonderful, and Fletch finds everything in the set worthwhile.

Sophie the Giraffe: link here

Everybody has this toy. It should be issued with babies. That's because it's inoffensive: it doesn't stink, it makes a squeak but it's a PLEASING squeak, and it can be chewed, loved, and washed a million times. Fletch has been able to clutch this since Grandma gave it to him for Christmas. It's adorable, too, however soulless the eyes may look on first glance.

Big Fuzzy Blanket: link here

Got this as a hand-me-down from sister Alicia. It's soooooooo soft and big and fuzzy and lovely. Don't let the word "chamois" fool you -- it's butter-soft polyester velvety stuff and feels like a dream. Do babies care how soft their blankets are? Possibly, possibly not, but this is the ultimate snuggle lure for grandparents. I wish I had one in grown-up size. I'd never leave the couch. But this one is big enough to throw over my shoulder and breasts AND cover Fletch with nicely when we nurse.

Tommee Tippee Bottles: link here

If you bottle-feed the baby, let it be with one of these. Honestly, these are outstanding. The one down side is that the shape makes it difficult to get the cream residue out of the bottle when washing it, so it requires extra elbow-grease to get it clean. But you won't care. It's so nice for baby.

Simplisse Breast Pumps: link to the electric double pump here

Full disclosure: I have a Medela Pump-In-Style. It's a workhorse. And I hate it. It tugs at me and I feel bruised after a pumping session. That said, I produce enough milk with it to have to donate the surplus... so how bad can it be?! However, after a power outage that left me engorged and sleepless, I decided to get a manual pump. I bought a Simplisse one because its ad copy is irresistible. AND I LOVE IT. The pump feels like a baby's mouth and face: soft, very gentle suction if any, and stimulating enough to encourage natural let-down. Using this thing once every few days has trained my breasts to let down milk so well that my production, even with the Medela, has boomed. I wish I had the double electric. Some users don't have much luck with it and they say it's loud as hell, but it's still very tempting to an exclusively-pumping mom like me.

Microfleece Sleep Sacks: link to one such is here

Babies aren't allowed to have blankets when they sleep, which means you aren't allowed to have your house much below 70 degrees at night. Ugh. Yuck. Even so, baby will get cold unless well zipped into a wearable blanket. Here it is, the safety snuggie for little bears. Great stuff! There's also the elasticized-bottom t-shirt fabric version, which is adorable on babies but neither warm enough nor un-kickable-offable enough for Fletch. Fleece fleece fleece.

That's all I can think of. Anyway, here you go! Baby goods!

Chochoyotes, and hi there!

2011-03-02T17:39:00.000-08:00

Gosh. I haven't fallen off the surface of the Earth, I really haven't. Days have been a blur of insurance training, baby care, Netflix (Blackadder! Scrubs! Battlestar Galactica!), and assisting Pat with the circus that has been his business life of late. Seriously, I should have a top hat. Or at least a whip and chair.

Speaking of top hat, look at what my friend Scott did! Front page of the NY Times, baby! He was protesting the latest in union-crushing legislation at the Wisconsin capital. I think this is the most wonderful picture.

I've got homemade corned beef (thanks to Ruhlman's Ratio for the recipe) simmering in the crock pot and the house smells amazing.

Have you discovered chochoyotes? I made some chile verde the other day, and these went into the pot. Nothing could be easier, and they are kind of like matzoh balls made from tamale dough. Yes.

Chochoyotes

1 cup masa harina
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup water

Mix the above (plus any spices you can't live without) and knead with your hands until the mixture clings together in a ball like nixtamal should. Then pinch off tablespoonish-sized lumps and roll between your moistened hands. Drop into simmering soup and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Enjoy!

Group guest post at Perfume-Smellin' Things - and happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T08:27:00.001-08:00

Go read it for the charming commentary of my peers -- you've heard most of what I have to say, I think. There's a prize draw, too.

I just taped up the cooler to send out to the Mother's Milk Bank and am waiting for FedEx to come pick it up. Fletch and I are donating 37 bags of breastmilk, totaling 277.2 ounces (17.3 pounds!). When the freezer fills up again, we'll donate again. Happy Valentine's Day, little babies in need!

You should make this.

2011-02-09T12:41:00.001-08:00

David Leite's Milk Mayonnaise is amazing. Silky smooth like a tofu mayo, and completely a tabula rasa for adding scrumptious flavorings. I'm going to go a little crazy with this. An immersion blender is a must.

You're welcome.

Chypres, and guest posts

2011-02-05T17:05:00.001-08:00

Group guest post yesterday at Perfume-Smellin' Things - go check it out! There's a drawing, too.

We divvied up the fragrance families for this post. Because I was checking email infrequently, I ended up being more-or-less assigned a family: chypre. (I did have a choice, but it was limited to things I mostly don't wear.) Unfortunately, I found myself neither tremendously knowledgeable nor very excited about any scent in particular.

Here's the deal: you'd recognize any other chypre as such after sniffing one and knowing what it was. They're classic "old lady" perfume: not heady, resinous, and spicy-sensuous like most Oriental perfumes, but complex, floral, and ladylike. There is a chypre accord that enlivens any fragrance in this family: top notes of citrus, a (usually blended or rose) floral middle, and a woody base with oakmoss, and possibly patchouli or musk.

This is not a combination for me. I don't like a lot of florals on my skin, because they take on narcotic, noxious, sickly-sweet overtones and have a lasting power that recalls the half-life of plutonium. Patchouli and musk make me cranky; oakmoss smells naughty, but male-type naughty, on my skin, and it wears me instead of the other way around. And every citrus smells like armpit on my skin. The result, on my skin, is "unwashed old lady who's been rolling around with a dockworker" and that doesn't spell success.

Chypres are not, in themself, disgusting. Pat loves them and finds them to be the epitome of femininity. The way L'Oreal lipstick smelled in the 80s? Chypre. Your grandmother's prettiest perfume -- the one she wore to church when she got all dolled up in her brooch and high heels? Yep. How you imagine Jayne Mansfield smelled? Probably a chypre.

So I hitched myself up by the bootstraps and decided to learn to love this genre. In so doing, I sniffed a lot of chypres that were new to me. I found one, "Hasu-No-Hana" by Grossmith, that is beautiful on me. It's a big scent -- like the archetypal great-grand-dame of chypres, "Mitsouko." But it's sexy and loaded with va-va-voom and if I'm going to wear something that isn't me, I might as well roleplay a bombshell. And hey, it's a fragrance from 1888 that has been reanimated by Roja Dove, a perfumer whose fragrances have fairly universally been masterpieces in my estimation.

Honorable mentions were Keiko Mecheri's "Iris Poupre," which is truthfully more about the rounded, rich iris root fragrance and less about the chypre; Parfumes MDCI "Vepres Siciliennes," which is like the floating scent of blossoms on the breeze, but which eventually gave me a headache as it remained rather top-heavy and piercing; and Domenico Caraceni's 1913 Eau de Toilette, which was angular, a little masculine, and sweetly fresh. Dizzy-making and too-heady or just I-found-'em-forgettable chypres included PG's "Querelle," PdN's "New York" (which I loved at first but turned to melted plastic and hot asphalt on my skin within a half hour and Would. Not. Wash. Off.), Tremlett's "Royals Heroes," and Tauer's "Une Rose Chypree" (predictably -- I hate rose on my skin) which were too rich for me, and Montale's "Chypre Vanille," which went on sexy but eventually made me very unhappy through its overgenerous patchouli and oakmoss and vanilla, and wouldn't scrub off even with laundry soap.

The big offender, which I hate passionately and would hiss at like a cat if I encountered it in the wild, is Vero Profumo's "Rubj." That's a shame: I really wanted to love it and I liked its kicky opening. But within moments it had turned into a horror show on my skin but painted a vivid picture: the overall cardboard-and-mixed-spices of an Asian grocery, the nag champa and cherry incense from a head shop, L'Oreal lipstick (back when it smelled like grandma's purse), and SWEATY MAN CROTCH. And it would not go away, and would not go away. I got it on the outside of the sample vial and now I can't handle it because aieee, it will never go away!

Also in the course of my journey of discovery into chypres, I decided to make one for my brother's birthday, just to get to know the style. But an eccentric one. I used lime, bergamot, and tangerine at the top (with other things, of course), lemongrass at the heart, and oakmoss and amber at the base to compose a chypre accord -- and it was wonderfully do-able! And then I loaded it with lemon, licorice, and leather scents (at top, middle, and base respectively) to give it substance and uniqueness.

I like it best of all. And Robert likes it, too, which is the best part.

Anyway, thought I'd rant a bit about what I've been sniffing, before I clear the sample vials off my desk. I'm listening to Fletch chatting with Pat over the baby monitor and am going to go get some snuggle time. Happy Saturday!

P.S. I really love "Mitsouko," but I didn't want to be lazy and phone in my usual choice -- I enjoyed the chance to do my homework and learn a little! I just wish I had never touched the vial of "Rubj." :)

Five years

2011-01-31T18:43:00.000-08:00

FIVE

Five years ago, I was in graduate school. I had just been on a Christmas cruise to Mexico with my mother, brothers, sister-in-law, and husband. It was my mom's first vacation in about a decade and the first time she hadn't taken a business call in more than 24 hours (maybe in more than 12) in all that time, and we enjoyed karaoke and running amok. It was the best time.

When I got back, my nose went to the grindstone trying to attract more committee members to my dissertation committee -- as had been my project for the previous five or six years. But by this time, I knew the situation was desperate; my chair was looking for a polished proposal and wasn't offering much helpful advice, and I'd been turned down by almost everyone who shared research interests with me. They were "too busy" or "on sabbatical" or "doing fieldwork" or "just didn't see the overlap."

In early autumn of 2006, my chair quit my committee, claiming no interest in my project. (That had been amply evident by her level of participation, but other profs were also disinterested in taking up where she left off.) I begged her to stay on-project, to just read what I had written for her. She would not. I broke down and cried in her office. I told her I had given up everything (children!) to pursue my career and that her departure from my committee would spell the end of my career, since I was well aware that I could not replace her. She told me to take up yoga or something. She told me she was concerned about my ... health. (She looked me pointedly up and down; I am fat, and since I was having a bad rosacea flare and had, at the time, pneumonia, I was red and wheezing after the three flights of stairs to her office.)

I alternated sleepless job-hunting, slumping in despair, and despondent WoW marathons for the next couple months. I didn't want to start over; I was too damn old and I had already given up absolutely everything I wanted (children!) for the dead end in which I'd invested myself. To start over would be to postpone fulfillment (children!) for several more years -- years that would claim my fertility.

FOUR

Four years and a couple months ago, we visited home for Christmas. I had been horribly stressed beforehand because I had not yet told my family that I had dropped out of grad school. But when I took my mom aside and sobbingly confessed that I was considering it, she was so supportive. Proud of me despite my crippling sense of failure. Loving. It was all I could do to keep her off the phone and to keep her from trying to take my ex-chair to court somehow. I told her I wanted to come live close to her and my brother again, and could she keep her ear to the ground to see if suitable jobs were available? Because they certainly were not available in Chicago... at least I had bad luck landing permanent work.

I was no sooner home than I got a phone call from Mom. Mom's good friend Stacy had an entry-level position opening. I applied, and Stacy was eager to have me aboard. She was simply worried that the entry-level salary wouldn't be sufficient. I told her that it was not, but if there was opportunity for advancement, I was in.

Four years ago tomorrow, I began working for Stacy. Her office was wonderful -- over a dozen of the loveliest people anywhere, working hard together. I caught on quickly and, three months later, was promoted into the most difficult position in the agency. I loved the work.

Shortly thereafter, Pat finally threw in the towel and joined me in abandoning graduate school. It hit him even harder than it had hit me, the sense of failure and despondency. His committee was absolutely unsupportive even face-to-face, and long-distance, it was impossible to proceed. He blamed me, but didn't mean to.

On our 19th anniversary, we went to the beach and watched people and birds and the waves, and we talked -- the tail end of one of those exhausting arguments where you just nibble at one another verbally for days and days, "talking it through" because there's nothing to fight about. I was bitter and hysterical. He was bitter and annoyed. And then, everything melted away; we managed to spark the wavelength that united us. We cleared the air about our negative feelings about leaving U of C and how we felt about one another's roles in the process. We were so wrung out we were clean and clear-headed. We finally internalized the lesson that life could be a journey and that we hadn't failed, we'd simply changed paths. I finally confessed that I'd hated the program for a really long time; I loved the work but hated the politics. He told me he felt the same way, but felt he had so much invested in it that he didn't want to walk away.

I wiped hamburger grease off my lips and put my head on his shoulder, holding his hand. I watched a toddler playing in the waves and told him that I felt the same way when we decided to put off having kids, and then decided against having them. All I had ever wanted to be before we were married (aside from some kind of Utopian commune leader, because I was a very New Age teenager and we were married right out of high school) was a mommy. And I didn't even know how I felt about having "made" that decision by enduring the slow and endless grind of grad school, forever deferring all decisions about our real future. Did we want kids? How would we know?

He watched the toddler, smiling. "You know what? I think I do."

I made him promise to take his time and think about it. But he didn't need time. He wanted children and he wanted them NOW. It took ME three days to decide I thought I wanted kids too.

A couple weeks later, I was at my annual ob/gyn appointment and mentioned casually to my doctor that I thought we might want to have kids. The doctor whisked away my IUD with the merest by-your-leave and told me to go get pregnant. Just like that. So that was how decisions worked in the real world!

THREE

It only took us three months to get pregnant. We told everyone. My mom was aglow. My dad was beside himself with delight. My brother looked at me as if I were sacred. My boss bubbled. Pat and I were giddy. But in the first week after the New Year, I lost the baby.

I have never cried like I cried then. I knew, just knew, that it would be hard.

I missed only one work day.

We miscarried five more times in the next two and a half years. We got pregnant easily, but couldn't keep it. I submitted to infertility treatments that seemed designed to wring out our pocketbooks rather than to increase our family. Sex became stressful. When pregnant, I would go hours without drinking anything because to pee was to have to check my panties for blood again; when not pregnant, I was thinking about how to get pregnant. It was unspeakable.

My senior co-worker's callousness started to get to me from right after the first miscarriage. She started watching me obsessively, asking nosy questions and lecturing me when I contacted Pat during my workday (on breaks); she felt I was out of line to use the phone or email to do so. The real tone-setter was when she threw a fit because I had a doctor's appointment two days after I lost the baby -- which would have been the first prenatal check-up. "Well, you don't need to keep it -- you're not pregnant NOW." (The doctor wanted to do an ultrasound to be sure I didn't need a D&C.) She wanted to take the day off in my place, so that she could give her dog some attention, as he had begun to escape her yard frequently as a result of neglect (requiring her to take off of work without warning to go track him down.)

I went to my boss. She was sympathetic and got me a little space from this co-worker (who had chewed through four unhappy assistants before me). But the bottom line was that the co-worker held all the cards and Stacy would not, or could not, do the only thing that would improve the toxic situation: disciplining or firing her.

When Pat surprised me with a 20th anniversary cruise to Alaska, it irritated my office manager and my boss that I had been absent so much. I had already used my nebulous quantity of work days on doctors' appointments and fighting colds without medication (lest I be pregnant and endanger the pregnancy with cold meds). I took vacation without pay, but it damaged my relationship with the office manager that the days off were not negotiable and that there was limited advance notice. Ah well. The vacation probably made me a thousand times more productive, and saved my sanity -- a shining moment of beauty and love, marred only by the depressing knowledge that I'd be ovulating sometime during the trip.

TWO

Two years ago, I continued to loathe my senior co-worker and to miscarry often. My job began to haunt me day and night. When the co-worker asked me to commit fraud, after a few stunningly fraudulent moments of her own, I gave up on ever coming to terms with her.

We quit trying to conceive and started enjoying sex, and our life together, again. We decided to adopt a baby. We researched it, traveled to information sessions, decided on an agency. We started thinking about the home study. We wisely decided to wait a few months before beginning the process so that we could relax a little, let go of our remaining grief about the whole infertility thing, and focus on each other. We felt wonderful and we started being enthusiastic again about life.

One and a half years ago, I quit the job. In this job market, it was an insane move -- but it made me happy and it made Pat happy, because I was so oppressed by the office situation. At any other time I might have weathered it, but under so much stress, no.

But I was happy again!

Right around Valentine's Day, we conceived. I didn't know. I had taken up new hobbies -- knitting (baby hats, for the eventual adoptee), spinning yarn, making sausage.

In April, I drove to the discount grocery in another nearby city to buy meat for sausage (hey, yes, their prices and products were THAT GOOD if you were buying 8 lbs. of meat). On the way, I decided that I was going to ask Pat for another year before we tried to begin the adoption process. Longer to get my perfumery business off the ground. Longer to become solvent. Longer to treasure just my darling partner. Even if we were never selected by a birthmother as parents for her baby, we'd be okay. We had each other; nothing had been diminished.

When I got to the store, I had a dizzy spell and lurched against the car. My breasts were sore.

I shopped. I came home, realizing that I felt nauseous. I knew I was pregnant. But I was coldly furious. I would be damned in hell if I would buy another pregnancy test -- I never wanted them in my home again.

A little voice in my head said, "you might still have OPKs laying around, and they work as ghetto pregnancy tests."

When I got home, I peed on an OPK. It turned two-lines-pink before I sat it on the counter. Positive-positive-positive. So I was pregnant. REALLY pregnant.

I jittered until Pat came home. I wasn't going to tell him, but when he got home I blurted it out before he had time to set down his keys, trying to keep my tone casual. "I just got a positive pregnancy test using an OPK. We're going to need a really ineffective pregnancy test to shoot this down with."

He was cool about it, but as unhappy as I was. We neither one wanted to weather another miscarriage. We didn't want a positive. We went to the store and bought the bluntest instrument of a pregnancy test we could -- a comparatively insensitive test with a text response, "PREGNANT" or "NOT PREGNANT." Unfuckupable. Uninterpretable. Unlikely to pop a false positive from hormonal fluctuation.

Before I had set it down on the counter, it, too, said "POSITIVE." I crumpled. We cried. We called my doctor. It was Friday afternoon (as it always is if you get a positive pregnancy test, by the way -- no joke, six out of six times). He told me to go get a lab test in 3 days. We waited to miscarry and cried in jags all weekend.

On Monday, I was still pregnant.

And at the end of the first (endless) trimester, I was still pregnant.

And at the end of the second (twitchy) trimester, I was still pregnant.

And at the end of the third (lightning-yet-bullet-time) trimester... I had Fletcher.

Heart's desire.

At last, at last. And someone who will join us on our journey, however far it takes us from our planned paths.

Today I embraced a new job opportunity and filled out an application to be a reserve agent for the same insurance company for which I was a CSR; here's hoping it embraces me back.

Dessert to dream on: brandied figs in tea syrup

2011-01-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

I got this idea from a cookbook, but noodled with it a bit and will probably noodle with it more. It's not that it's not perfect as/is, it's that I can't leave well enough alone. You know how it is.

Brandied Figs in Earl Grey Tea Syrup

3 cups of Earl Grey tea (normal strength or strong, but not bitter)
1 to 1 1/2 pounds dried figs (I used VERY dry calimyrnas, because that's what I had)
1 cup sugar
peel of one or two tangerines, in large, easy-to-remove pieces
3 or 4 inch cinnamon stick
1/4 vanilla bean
1/2 cup decent brandy

Add cinnamon, vanilla, and fruit peel to tea. Simmer figs in spiced tea until they are swollen, plump, and tender. Remove figs with slotted spoon to sterilized jars or your serving bowls (figs will be dark and dramatic -- color-coordinate accordingly). Add sugar to spiced tea and simmer mixture for a few minutes or until it behaves like syrup should, thickening slightly and coating your spoon. Remove from heat and add brandy. Pour brandied syrup over figs.

Serve over something not too sweet, with something crunchy alongside, four or five figs and a healthy belt of syrup to a person. I recommend Greek yogurt and waffle cookies or other dainty, wafer-like crispy cookies. But I am considering saturating a pancake or two with the syrup. Truly, this is swoony good and oh-so-sophisticated and, if you have it cold in the fridge, you can put it together last-moment without breaking a sweat and then socialize while you're still as glamorous and seductive and unruffled as Nigella.

One of these days, soon, I'll bundle homemade white cheese or ricotta into crepes and top it with this stuff. Magic.

I think this would be totally tits made with prunes instead of figs, but the deep-dark flavors are necessary with the tea and brandy, so I haven't thought further than figs and prunes. If you want something lemony light, for God's sake go make Emily's wonderful pudding cake. I've made it a half dozen times or more and every time, people just about faint.

(Hail Eris.)

Ducklings

2010-12-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

In 1998, we moved to Chicago -- a gorgeous, vital, friendly city which now warms our fond memories and wistful thoughts. However, we moved there from the Palouse hills in Idaho. There were less than 2 million people in Idaho. There are over 8 million in Chicagoland, packed tightly. We had some culture shock when we arrived there, towing our logging-road-enduring, planned-obsolescence-defying Geo Metro behind our U-Haul truck down the ruined tollways and urban residential streets, amidst copious homeless persons and obvious gang presence. We reclusive, bird-watching geeks were clearly not in our element. By the time we started unpacking our truck, we discovered the lovely side of the city: people watching the truck for us and scolding us when we left it unlocked because we "shouldn't trust people," the neighbors' bodybuilding Russian guest helping unload the truck and bringing us cold iced tea and civilized conversation, the friendliness of neighbors who wanted answers when they asked how we were.

Nonetheless, urban life brings its own challenges -- like neighborhoods completely lacking box stores or other retail outlets, and having to commute to get to grocery stores. So we picked a suburb pretty much at random, because it had lots of water near it in which there might be waterfowl, and drove there to go shopping and fool around. And there were geese and ducks and good places to eat and green plants in broader swaths than the parks that dotted South Chicago, so we kept coming back. Eventually we dubbed it "the Stomping Grounds" and did a lot of our shopping for things like electronics and Christmas gifts there.

In spring of 2002, we noticed a Canada goose snuggled down in a planter right in front of one of the box stores (neither of us can remember the store -- it was a discount chain right next to We-R-Toys and Bloodbath & Beyond). She was nesting there, supervised by a visibly anxious gander who strolled disconsolately up and down the parking lot, grumbling at passersby. She honked and hissed at all pedestrians, offering to bite those who stopped to admire her. It was probably the worst nesting site in the history of nesting sites. We dubbed her Crazy Goose and drove out there every other day throughout the whole nesting season to make sure the water pan a goose-bitten Samaritan had left her had been refilled. When we fed her corn muffins, she hissed us the whole time she gobbled them, and got a lump of them stuck in her throat that caused her to drool her water back out. We waited for the lump to clear before we would drive home to our apartment, abused the whole time by her cursing and grumbling, and nervously watching her gander try to decide whether he wanted to kick our butts or not.

We'd been watching her for almost two weeks -- walking right up to her to feed her and give her water -- by the time we noticed Quiet Duck.

Quiet Duck had clearly taken the advice of her crazy goose friend on nesting sites and just as clearly regretted it. She hunched silently in the bushes in the planter, head nestled in her burnished breast, eyes closed so not to raise a shine, Zen not-thinking to be invisible. She could have been a ninja. She was so silent and still that even after one had seen her, one could lose her position -- in broad daylight, exposed in a planter in front of a busy retail hub.

It seemed plain that Crazy Goose did not like sharing her water and food with Quiet Duck, even after she had talked her into nesting in a madhouse with her. We tried to feed Quiet Duck, who seemed unhappy to have been noticed and merely sank down more silently and sullenly and not-thunk all the harder, and Crazy Goose hissed and darted in to steal the crumbs from under Quiet Duck's still, hiding, sad little beak. There was nothing to be done for her, other than respect her desire to hide.

One day when we returned to visit the nesting waterfowl and refill the water pan, Quiet Duck seemed particularly bedraggled. We nudged a small, separate water bowl with a few shreds of lettuce floating in it to the duck. She shrank back in alarm, adjusting her wings, and finally standing up.

A full dozen little faces, yellow like dandelion flowers and enlivened by shiny, guileless bright eyes with a smudgy mascara stripe across them like a mask, popped up from around her. They wobbled prodigiously in the spring sunlight on skinny necks like fuzzy yellow-brown stems. Each and every one of the twelve ducklings began peeping softly and continued to do so, softly muffled, after their mother settled her glossy feathers over them again with a matronly plump and shimmy.

The next day, when we (irresistably) returned, she and her ducklings had wandered to safer territory... probably the cattail marsh across the street.

I have never forgotten these ducklings -- they were probably the most precious sight I've seen until recently. And now, my son, a golden and fuzzy creature with bright shiny eyes in a face like a flower, wobbles exactly the same way when he raises his head on his slender neck to peep at the world.

...and a postscript, just to tell you how great Chicago is. In 2003, Crazy Goose returned to her absolutely terrible nesting site, probably very close indeed to where she was herself born -- as female waterfowl will, generation after generation, regardless of anthropogenic changes to the landscape. Her dutiful mate hovered anxiously nearby. But rather late in the nesting season, construction crews started tearing down the building in front of which her planter was situated.

We were despondent. We were afraid she would defend the nest and be hurt herself, and were grief-stricken that her eggs -- already probably peeping with the life ready to burst forth from them -- would not get the chance to hatch. We worried about her gallant gander. I stayed awake late at night crying, and made Pat drive me back out there to see if there was anything we could do for her. (Yes, I'm as crazy as Crazy Goose.)

Impossibly, the gander was still meandering unhappily around the parking lot, looking defensive and slightly embarrassed. We approached the planter, which appeared to be filled with construction debris, with trepidation.

The construction workers had built her a little house, erecting bricks to either side of the nest and a sturdy roof atop it to keep out any falling brickbats from the rest of the deconstruction going on behind her. She hissed us merrily and bit my thumb when I checked the level of her water pan.

And there she stayed, in her little nest house, until she had hatched out the chicks and led them off to whatever zone she chose to raise them in. And I felt better about the world and positively in love with the construction workers (which is easy to do -- they're lovely to look at, aren't they?)

And that's a real-world happy ending.

Two things to do with Brussels sprouts

2010-12-17T20:06:00.001-08:00

I got fancy with dinner last night, and made chicken in a mushroom thyme cream sauce, and leek and fennel risotto seasoned with fennel seeds and thyme and splashed with absinthe to make the fennel flavor pop -- and a Brussels sprout salad that knocked our socks off.

Brussels sprouts are Pat's favorite vegetable, and there are lots of ways to fix them that are utterly delicious. I'm going to give you my two favorites, but you can be madly creative with the little flavor buttons if you simply adhere to two rules:

1) They must be fresh, not frozen; the fresher, the better. You are looking for smallish sprouts without yellow wilted leaves or ooky black spots -- and this time of year you should be able to find a stalk of them, fancy for the holidays. They are really fresh when you cut them right off that stalk, provided they aren't all wilty.

2) You must absolutely not overcook them. Note that they are overcooked as soon as most people consider them fully cooked: you want them to retain a little tender-crispness, not to melt into cabbagey softness. Their texture is neat when they are soft, but they lose something in the flavor department.

So, last night's salad:

FEATHERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS SALAD WITH FENNEL (2 generous portions)

12 Brussels sprouts, shaved paper thin with a mandoline or a very sharp knife and patience (if you do this by hand, cut them in half so that they don't roll on the cutting board and then slice them fine)
1/2 bulb of fennel, pale part only, cored and shaved paper thin
1/3 cup or so of flavorful nuts (hazelnuts or almonds are wonderful)
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper to taste
a few tablespoons of freshly shaven shards of Parmesan cheese

Mix all ingredients, withholding nuts and cheese if desired to sprinkle atop. I didn't; I mixed it all in with my hands and it was wonderful that way.

And my favorite sprouts recipe...

FIERY BRUSSELS SPROUTS

15 or 20 Brussels sprouts, trimmed and cut in half or in quarters
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter (optional - use more olive oil if preferred)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced or cut into fine matchstick shapes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pine nuts (totally optional and I most often forget them, but mmm)

Heat oil and butter over medium-high heat, and throw in Brussels sprouts and garlic. Stir fry until sprouts are very bright green and tender-crisp (you can hurry this up by adding a tablespoon or three of water and letting it cook off -- it will help steam the sprouts and keep the garlic from burning if you have other things going on). Add spices, stir and fry a few more moments, and serve. These are AWESOME with Italian food: alongside pasta with a red sauce, lasagne, or sausage and peppers on polenta.

If these two recipes don't blow your skirt up, I don't know why.

Brussels sprouts also love to be paired with: a spoonful of grainy mustard in a butter sauce, a squeeze of key lime juice and salt and pepper, flavorsome olive oil and a lavish last-minute splash of Vincotto, or fingerling potatoes and bacon.

Thank you, state-sponsored insurance

2010-12-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

The grand totals so far for Fletcher's birth: $144,475.94 was either discounted ("patient savings") or paid by insurance. That's 100% of the bill, for those keeping track -- and that doesn't count the lavish prenatal care that they already covered.

And suddenly I do not mind paying my state taxes, nor my insurance premiums.

Make this. Right now.

2010-11-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

If you like gingerbread, apples, and wonderful holiday smells, this cake is for you. Plus it comes out bakery-gorgeous. Wow.

Dr. Babs' Ginger Apple Torte from Food52.

Also, Fletch is volunteering to nurse straight from the tap, once per day only and in the morning. I know it's ridiculous, but it heals my (ridiculous) feelings of rejection -- as do his loving little monkey-face expressions.

(Pictured: monkey-face. Very blurry. But that's the expression. Awwwww....)

Life is good, and I am THANKFUL indeed.

Now, go make the cake. Yes, turbinado sugar. Don't fuck around with this, the crunchy topping is too good to risk on substitutions. You heard Auntie Linda.

Not dead, just sleepless and busy... and in love. Also, TMI about nursing, probably.

2010-11-15T11:41:00.001-08:00

Oh my! Life with a newborn is wonderful. Fletcher is already displaying a lovely personality and lively intelligence, seen in glimpses in the short hours in which he is awake and the fleeting smiles that cross his face on the twilight edge of sleep. (Gassy grimace "smiles" are different.) He makes earnest attempts to communicate, through eye contact and the simplest and most pure signs and gestures: for instance, he roots all the time, for his knuckles, my pinky finger, the pacifier, nipples, and for food, but if he is HUNGRY, he makes pointed eye contact and then opens his mouth wide, like a baby bird. He copies facial expressions -- sort of -- although he has patience only for sequences of three or four of them. He clearly loves and trusts his father and mother. And he is strong -- raising his head from Day Two, although he cannot maintain it, and becoming Tiny Fists-O-Fury when upset or gassy.

Guess what upsets Fletcher? My breasts.

He won't nurse, for various reasons. When he was born, he was lethargic from Magnesium Sulfate and morphine, hypoxia, and a precipitous blood pressure drop. He was "sleepy" and the instant the nipple went into his mouth, he fell asleep. Tickling or chilling him during nursing to try to keep him awake only (predictably?) annoyed him further.

He clearly dislikes having a lot of breast tissue in his face along with the nipple, but there's not much I can do about that -- I am both fat and busty, and I have a lot of breast tissue. The "breast sandwich" is too fat for his little mouth, and my nipples are too big for him. And after being injured by the well-meant pinching of the lactation consultants and my own desperate attempts to compress my size Fs into size As for the baby, I have been wrestling with engorgement that makes this problem worse, much worse: the nipple is perched on a taut, swollen areola that cannot be "sandwiched."

And he hates to be confined (except in a swaddle, which is most DEFINITELY not nursing attire in his book) and doesn't like to be "positioned" tummy to tummy with me (or any variation thereof, in which he has to lie still and stop swinging fists and feet). He doesn't open his mouth wide enough to latch, ever, and might be tongue-tied... but at this stage of the game I would not consent to elective surgery (however minor) to correct it.

But he was jaundiced and we were in a major hurry to get some nutrition in him to flush the bilirubin out of his system. So we fed him expressed colostrum, by finger feeding and through a bottle nipple, with the assistance and blessing of the lactation consultants. He is now nipple-confused and just gnaws the bottle nipples instead of sucking on them -- though he does suck my pinky and the pacifier, if he can get his tongue properly depressed to do so.

The only position in which Fletcher appeared to enjoy the process of unproductively mauling my nipple, licking off the droplets I hand-expressed to tempt him at least, was oddly gymnastically equivalent to the reverse-cowgirl (or at least the 69) of nursing: too contrived, lacking in intimacy, and simply not as pleasurable as it is adventurous. I can lie on my side with the baby's tummy toward my face and his head toward my breast, and instead of arching, screaming, and pummeling me with his brutal little fists and seizing handfuls of areolae with his sharply kitten-clawed fingers, or falling asleep, he simply gums my nipple and whimpers. But when they tried to teach me to do this in the hospital, I was in agony from my incision, and I am not sure that it's the answer now, either. I mean, nursing at the breast instead of simply lying together skin-to-skin and feeding him satisfactorily from a bottle is a matter of my convenience: for social reasons, I cannot exactly strip, lie down 69-fashion with the baby, and try to force him to suckle instead of gnaw in a "mothers' room" at Babies-R-Us -- let alone at my chair in a restaurant!

So. I've been exclusively pumping breastmilk for the little guy. And, when necessary due to engorgement or blockage or when encouraged by nurses in order to help push out bilirubin, a supplemental bottle of formula every other day or so.

I've researched nursing through every website and book I can lay hands on, and am mightily annoyed. All of them assume that you will read the books before starting and NOT as a matter of troubleshooting, and all of them assume that if you just stick with it everything will be magical and will work out perfectly and unicorns will fart rainbows on every street corner. They make dire predictions that if you ever, ever give a baby formula, you have condemned him/her to a life of obesity and diabetes, amid other complaints. They tell you not to "give in." They assume that doggedness is all it will take to nurse a baby. And I am here to tell you, it doesn't always work out that way.

Also, there's a lot of disinformation out there. Nice and well-meaning people with lots of professional experience will give some of it to you. They probably do a lot of good for people without serious problems, but for those of us who have some stubborn obstacles, the advice itself can cause suffering.

Here are the little things about expressing breastmilk that I've learned so far.

1. DON'T let pumping or hand expression cause you pain. If the pump hurts you, you may have too small a flange for your nipple, or too sharp an edge in your flange: use lanolin to grease the flange edge if you need or file it down with a fine emery board before you wash it next. Or you may have the suction turned up too high. Just -- don't. Be gentle and kind and loving to your breasts.

2. DON'T worry. If you are stressed, you will give less milk (that session.) Take the time to relax, breathe deeply, think happy thoughts, get a massage or get your back scratched, get comfortable, have someone hold the baby, have your significant other massage your breasts (NEVER toward the nipple, always away! and massage up to the collarbones and out to the edge of the armpits, you have glands everywhere), use hot compresses or take a warm shower if you like. Kick your relatives out, even if you would let them watch you nurse: pinching your breasts or being hooked up to the machine is not shameful, but it is qualitatively different. You will be amazed how much this affects your milk production.

3. About quantities: all the books will tell you that so long as your baby is peeing or pooping the requisite number of times and appears to be thriving, you have enough milk. This is probably true; all babies are different. And yet... if you're like me, you want to know what would be ideal production. You will start out producing a milliliter or two a session of expressed colostrum, the sticky yellow stuff that is so great for babies and which comes in before your milk. That amount will increase until transitional milk comes in (much wetter and whiter). By the end of the first week of the baby's life, you will probably be producing at least half an ounce to an ounce of milk a session. By the end of six weeks, when your milk is done transitioning and your supply becomes more or less stable if maintained, you'll be producing something like 25 ounces a day.

4. Pump every 2 1/2 to 3 hours during the day and every 3 to 4 hours at night, for 12 to 15 minutes a session. This is tough to balance if you get tender: you'll need to stop if you are making yourself sore and aren't producing much milk, but you will want to express a goodly quantity every session to "order" the milk you want for the next session (you get back what you remove from the breast.) Don't crank up the pump strength. Don't pump more frequently. Don't pump forever in a session. Painless and efficient is what you want.

5. Use an ice-pack after pumping if you are sore. Don't use it too close to the next session, as a cold boob is not an optimal milker. Use a warm compress to loosen things up again if desired.

6. Try to get ahead of the baby's needs. If baby is crying, it will stimulate your letdown, sure, but it'll raise your stress. See #2 above. Have someone entertain the baby if possible while you focus on pumping.

7. Don't focus too hard on pumping. Feel free to relax & meditate, fantasize, scheme, watch TV, read, whatever. I catnap because oxytocin makes me a zombie.

8. WEAR A BRA. Not a tight bra that leaves lines and compressions on your skin, because that will impact the glands and could cause mastitis or engorgement. A nicely-fitting, soft, stretchy sports bra.

9. While you pump, use gentle compression on the engorged glands in your breast to increase milk flow. You'll be shocked at how well this works. GENTLE is the watchword here -- and you do not want to squeeze-and-pull toward the nipple, just to press the milk sinuses that are reluctant to release their bounty.

10. Don't squish the flanges into your flesh so hard that they create compression areas. The ideal is to hold the flanges gently onto your skin in a "natural" position. This ideal is ridiculous, because there is nothing comfortable about leaning forward with your hands tucked under your knockers and trying to hold on hard-plastic cups that will spill milk down to your navel if you jostle them at all, but it's just that -- an ideal. Shoot for it. And learn to live with the spills.

If I think of more, I'll add them. But there you go.

Oh! And a guest post at Perfume-Smellin' Things -- go check it out! (A top 10 post contribution, not a solo post)

2010-11-07T19:35:00.001-08:00

Woohoo! The top 10 of Fall.

It went out while I was in the hospital, but do enjoy.

Home again, home again!

2010-11-07T11:21:00.001-08:00

We were supposed to go home on Thursday, but they held us another day to keep an eye on Fletcher -- and on me. Little Fletcher's bilirubin numbers continued to go up gradually, but as jaundice can be dangerous if it gets bad enough, and the hospital has access to transcutaneous bilirubin testers (a light shined through the fat on baby's noggin that returns a level of "yellow", so far as I can tell) and didn't need to draw blood unless the numbers got scary. As for me, my blood pressure was a little elevated again and the doc wanted to make sure it didn't continue to climb. Also, my feet are HUGE because of IV fluids and he wanted to watch me for blood clots. All good.

But. They said the words "brain damage or death" about jaundice and then took my blood pressure. Imagine! And then, they rotated in nurses from another department to cover the night shift.

Fletcher still does not like to nurse. I was trying, at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, to nurse him, and we had arrived at a perfect "I will try this and NOT scream like you stabbed me, but we're not good at it yet" situation. And then, the fire alarms in the hospital started making noise. The bulkhead-style hall doors locked themselves down with talking security locks (the closest one about 2 feet from my room door) and started droning canned warnings about fire. SEVEN strangers ran into my room, where I was trying to feed an upset newborn, all nekkid, and one threw a cloth at me: "You might want to cover yourself, we have an emergency."

The fire alarm located in the attic of our room had malfunctioned, automatically shut off the air conditioning to the entire hospital, and closed all the bulkheads, and the only cure was for the lone Operations manager to be on a ladder in my attic for three hours while his phone went off every minute and a half because the laboratory and clean rooms COULD NOT OPERATE without the air conditioning...

The night nurse forgot to give me my pain medication on time THREE TIMES, resulting in a lot of pain. I was also suffering some weird sore/inflamed breast symptoms because the lactation consultant pinched my nipple too hard (I know, right?) and had had me lie on one side to try another "hold" -- which made my incision tender. When she DID finally come in (when I demanded medication) in her street clothes, she waxed horrified and alarmed at how my baby's bilirubin level had "spiked" and WHEN were they considering putting him under bili-lights, because the levels were dangerous? (She's from another department: babies' tolerance for bilirubin exceeds that of adults, but I didn't know that... and neither did she.)

Pat spent hours researching jaundice online. Medical studies of jaundice that he found online were neither comforting nor able to confirm anything scary. All we knew was that we were doing things right and that the baby had multiple risk factors and that his numbers were borderline.

Guess when they elected to take my blood pressure? Right. Plus the nurse's assistant who took the BP did not sanitize her hands, coughed the entire time she was in my room, and grumbled about having been reassigned to mother/baby from pediatrics -- all of this while the room next door had CDC warnings posted on it for "respiratory contagion." Ohmigod.

So I told them that, if my baby was well enough, I was going home no matter what my fucking blood pressure might be, because it would surely be lower at home.

In the morning, my doctor saw no reason to keep me: I look to be healing well, my blood pressure was going down, nothing to especially worry him. He told me what to watch out for.

The pediatrician who stopped in scoffed at the baby's bilirubin level and told us to take him home and continue taking good care of him, and get him to the doctor for a check up on Monday.

We got him dressed, fed, and checked out. We stuffed him into his baby carrier. We brought him home, where, excited by the change of scenery and habits, and the reduced noise level, he could hardly sleep.

It's bliss to be home. Pure bliss. And life with a newborn, although challenging, is wonderful. He is charming, funny, and smart already (a being of pure Id), and can Houdini his way out of any mittens, socks, or swaddles he is put into. (And twice, his diapers along with the swaddling blankets.... oy!)

My mom, now known as "Grandma" despite her sworn oath never to let anyone call her that, is cooking copious and delicious meals for us and is a blessing. My darling friend and doula April, trusty by our sides throughout the hospitalized period, has offered to do any errands or help any way she can. The wonderful ladies at church are offering to make casseroles, come help, and provide sympathetic ears if I need them. The only cloud on my horizon, a very small cloud, is that my hormones are crazy out of whack and I can go hysterical with weeping over something like a bird-rescue call too difficult for us to take in our current situation. (I guess I frustrate easily right now -- and the idea of leaving something helpless without assistance just got to me. But I am still blissful, not depressed.)

More pictures of our little yellow Oompa-Loompa are surely to come, but I'm just catchin' you up, right now. :)

Love you guys. Be good.

Fletcher is here!

2010-11-04T18:47:00.000-07:00

I am posting from the hospital, where the nurses are the BEST and nicest, and although I am tired of being here, I am glad they're watching over me.

Thursday morning, I had a check up at my obstetrician's office. I woke up late and hustled through a shower, having not even washed my hair. So it was Murphy's Law that he took one look at my scary-high blood pressure and sent me to the hospital to be induced -- do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not go home and get your hospital bag or wash your hair first.

I checked in and they instantly (against my wishes) installed an IV. They wanted it there "just in case." (It was put in wrong or somehow compromised, because it inflated my hand in 2 days and I had to be IV'd on the OTHER side too -- and then that IV was in long enough that it had to come out before they were sure they were done with it. That's how long I've been in the hospital.)

They tried 2 12-hour torture sessions involving Cervodil. Cervodil, in case you are blithely innocent of its existence, is a 2" x 14"-ish kite-shaped affair made of medicine-impregnated cardboard and shoestring. (Yes, really.) It makes everyone sore. It made ME so sore that, after the first 12 hours, I begged them to find something else to try -- and after 8 hours of the 2nd dose, I asked them to contact my doctor NOW because it had to come out. He and I split the difference -- agreeing that it would come out in an hour or two instead of immediately. The only unpleasant nurse I had went on duty and ignored that order completely, ensuring that the second dose was in for just under 11 hours. As it turns out, my misery was justified: I am allergic to Cervodil.

So. Then to Cytotec. It is not approved by the FDA as an inducer of labor, so the doctor on duty -- not my normal doctor, as it was now the weekend -- did not want to continue it. 2 doses of Cytotec later, nothing much had happened other than contractions, but my blood pressure had skyrocketed. So the doctor on duty -- again, very sweet but NOT my doctor -- put me on magnesium sulfate, which they use to delay labor, to lower the BP. And Pitocin, which does nothing but induce contractions. Predictably, this did nothing for inducing labor. It also did nothing good for my blood pressure (maybe!) because it got to 210/112 before my doctor showed up on Monday and told me it was time to do a C to keep me healthy.

Three different anesthesiologists argued about whether or not it was okay to do an epidural or spinal with me, because of my genetic condition -- which made a bleed inside the spinal column, which could be permanently paralyzing, more probable than with the general population. This was balanced against general anesthesia, which is dangerous for anyone and more than usually so at my weight. We decided on a spinal.

During the C section, my blood pressure dropped precipitously to 90/60 (from 200/100ish). The baby was delivered limp and waxen, had to be resuscitated, and had an Apgar score of 2. He was taken to the NICU to be evaluated and was, fortunately, swift to recover (although the magnesium sulfate and BP drop has affected him, it's unlikely to cause anything permanent.)

The baby won't latch on to nurse (he is early, my breasts are fuller than he likes, and he's a "sleepy" baby because of the drugs) but feeds well with pumped or expressed milk, which has come in so well that the day nurse today yipped "God A-mighty" when she saw how much we are getting. We gave him formula to help move the bilirubin out of his system faster, because he's a little jaundiced.

They are watching me for high blood pressure tonight, because it crept back up after delivery, and are watching him for a dangerous increase of jaundice.

NOTHING here is as planned. I wanted a natural delivery, no formula, nursing, no drugs, absolutely no induction before baby was ready, and no C-section.

But, listen to me. I WOULD NOT CHANGE A THING. They saved my life. They saved my beautiful, healthy, already-smart, precious miracle child. They delivered our little son and I am totally at peace with everything that happened.

I had the good fortune of getting "unvarnished" advice from my friend Kate, a total super-mom by the way, who does all the "right" things with her toddler and newborn even as she jet-sets to conventions and publishes articles and grades graduate students' work and teaches. She advised me to "be reasonable." She said that if changes to the plan needed to happen, to welcome them.

Oh my God, thank you, Kate. Better advice was never given. At each step, I have been serenely confident and filled with trust and joy (and I have to admit, impatience -- boy, I wanted a shower, and to have the IV out, and to have the baby, and now, to go home. But still confident, serene, and joyous.)

This is my reward:

Politics

2010-10-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

I spent half of yesterday in the Labor & Delivery ward again. I couldn't feel the baby moving during the morning, and by 1:15 was a basket case. Pat had me call the doctor and ask what to do, and he wanted me to go in and be monitored. Of course, by the time we arrived at the L&D ward, the baby was squirming. By the time they had me hooked to the monitors, the baby was squirming so hard and persistently that they could not get a baseline for his heartrate, and we had to spend extra time there until he finally calmed down enough for them to do so.

My own blood pressure was bad. The systolic and diastolic seem to be headed in opposite directions... the higher the top number climbs, the lower the bottom number dives. The nurse, who has 20+ years' experience in this department, called it "weird." That's never a great sign.

I can not WAIT to get this show on the road. I have a doctor's appointment today and will see if we can do this sooner than later; with my blood pressure as spotty as it has been, every additional symptom freaks me out so badly that I am afraid the wait will damage MY health.

So. Now I'm ruefully concerned that I might not be able to vote in the upcoming election, because timing is such that it might become an issue. This baby has been to vote twice, and I thought it would be three times... but maybe, maybe not.

Thus I feel the need to do a good, political deed -- not muckraking, not mud-slinging, not ranting for once -- but just providing a few key facts.

Are you American, or do you have American friends? If so, read this -- or give them this link to read -- before the big day rolls around.

Zooooom!

2010-10-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you already connected to me by Facebook, I apologize for the overlap.

But. OMG.

Three days ago, the baby dropped. I had contractions all day, like 20+ of them, and was a little freaked out. They were short and irregular ones, but clearly things were moving somehow. And then -- all of a sudden, I could breathe, because he stopped kicking me directly in the lungs, and I could eat, because I had a little more tummy room. Hooray! I can see that he's lower by looking at my profile... where before, my torso looked like a capital D, now it kind of looks like a lowercase b. Yes. But of course, now I waddle like a Weeble (yes, it was bad before but now only a duck would consider it normal) and my taint aches and all that stuff that happens when you have a baby's head bonking on your cervix (not quite, but close). I can feel my pelvic bones stretching apart... too creepy, but also too, too awesome.

Also contributing to the feeling of OMG ZOOOOM! I am showing much more definite signs of pre-eclampsia now: my blood pressure is remaining high with very high spikes (150/110 is the prizewinner so far), and I seem to be spilling protein into my urine. Pre-eclampsia is the leading cause of maternal and infant death in the U.S. (and much of the world), so my doctor is treating it seriously. We are monitoring carefully, and...

...labor is going to be induced early. As early as a couple days, or as late as a couple weeks, but I am going to have my baby before his due date.

This is not TOO scary. At 36 weeks gestation, the baby is almost full term (37 weeks is considered term.) He is making breathing movements with his lungs, which is a terrific sign. He is big, heavy, and vigorous, and at his weekly (now twice-weekly) non-stress tests, he is performing like a champ.

I didn't really favor induction, because in fat women (and I am indisputably a fat woman) it tends to start a spiral of interventions ending in unnecessary C-sections; however, my doctor is totally on-board with trying to avoid unnecessary surgery for me. My concern is the hideous scarring to which I tend to be prone... not for vanity's sake, but because my insurance cuts out 6 weeks after the baby arrives and I can't afford infections or complications. But I find I am at peace with, even excited about, this change in plans.

For one thing, my doctor is on board with my birth plan and even made changes to it to help me reduce the chances of needing episiotomy/experiencing bad tearing. Thank you, best doctor ever! For another thing... well, I am REALLY uncomfortable now and my shoulders dislocate every night when I sleep (I did not really need all the extra relaxin in my system) and I am tired of my hands being asleep when I wake up, and all that. And much more excitingly, I cannot wait to hold my son.

Cannot. Wait.

My doctor put me on bed-rest, which means I am mostly confined to sitting (with my feet up as much as possible) and queening it about, telling my poor husband (who is beginning to panic) what to do and to do it NOW and what I want for dinner. This is hard for me: I am a born DIY'er and although a lot of the time "it" doesn't get done if I don't feel like it, I've always been happy with that. It's horribly unjust that the nesting impulse, the necessity to nest, and bed-rest have coincided. Everyone let's feel sorry for poor Pat... and I am serious. That, plus my whining and bitching, would have put me over the edge by now if I were him. He's up for sainthood in my book.

Also up for sainthood? My buddy, coach and doula April. She's offering to help with nesting, and has already told her bosses that she WILL leave work at the drop of a hat to go listen to me snarl.

Have I mentioned I'm ... um.... charming, when I'm in pain? I try, but I am kind of nasty and I know it. I'm the one who responds, "of COURSE I'm not all-fucking-right, would I be screeching if I were all right?" after I stub a toe and someone asks me if I'm okay. So again, pity Pat. And April.

But not me. Because having a baby to play with earlier will be peachy keen by me. :)

And I MAY even have him before I'm over 40, which I swore I would do and was amused/chagrined when he was conceived such that he was due when I was 41.

Cranberry soup

2010-10-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

In rainy fall weather, when I crave some violently bright color to offset all the gray, and when I am pining for wintertime smells and flavors, this stuff is a standby of our household. I also used to make it when we'd get headcolds and it seemed to help. Okay, so it's not exactly health food (especially if you are watching sugar) -- it will still warm you up and pack you full of antioxidants and bioflavenoids and pectin and fiber and good stuff.

Back in the day, I used to top a bowlful with a dollop of plain yogurt. Today I didn't have any, and I think I liked it better without. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for dairy.

If you don't love this as a hot soup, keep it around and use it to top desserts or as the soupy portion of a cobbler, or something.

This is almost too simple to be a recipe. You can add a knob of butter if you want, and top it with plain yogurt if you so desire... but it's pleasing as is.

Cranberry soup

2 apples, cored and sliced
1 1/2 cups cranberries
water to cover, or a mix of water and apple juice
about 1/3 cup of sugar (I used vanilla sugar today because ALL of my sugar is in that container) -- or you could use alternative sweeteners, but artificial sweeteners are nasty with cranberries. You've been warned.
1 teaspoon spice of choice (I used pumpkin pie spice today because I was feeling lazy, but cinnamon and allspice work wonderfully ... and so does black pepper if you're feeling naughty)
tiny pinch of salt

Simmer fruit until cranberries have burst and broken down considerably, and apples are very soft. Puree with immersion blender (or in batches in pitcher blender). Spice and sweeten to taste -- it will require a considerable amount of sugar to be palatable but should remain on the tart side. You may strain this mixture if you prefer not to have curly, linear bits of cranberry and apple peel in your thick, velvety puree: I didn't today because we're tough that way. It depends on how ferocious your blender is, too... if you've got a Vita-Mix, gosh, why bother straining it?

Enjoy.

Rooster sauce and baby food

2010-10-17T15:55:00.001-07:00

Seriously, if you can lay your hands to some ripe red Fresno chiles, make this homemade sriracha sauce. Even if you can't, try substituting other chiles: red would be more authentic for flavor, but we made a batch with green jalapenos and serranos too, and it was delicious-if-not-the-same.

If you are using nuclear-hot chiles or have a tender mouth, shake out the seeds before the soaking-in-vinegar stage, and/or leave them to soak in the vinegar for a day or two extra to allow them to mellow.

Double the garlic. Yes, really.

Feel free to substitute in whatever sugar you like: we used piloncillos because I have always found them to resemble palm sugar.

My baby shower was yesterday, which was fun: it's a sweet little women's ritual I've never been through before, as I've never attended one. We had delicious lunch and beautiful cake and I have SO many gifts for the baby and I need to write thank you letters and we played silly games like sniffing melted candy bars in disposable diapers (I won! My perfumers' nose and pregnancy super-senses are verified), tasting commercial baby food (oh GOD! Baby food is awful. Just awful, health-damagingly horrible. I am going to mash up whatever in lieu of feeding him this stuff as often as possible) and unscrambling baby-related word ciphers -- which my natural-cryptanalyst mom, predictably, won. (She got in trouble as a tween for sitting down with her dad's Masons handbook and reading it as if it were any ol' unencoded book... she's really gifted at word scrambles.)

Pat had begged off the baby-shower thing out of purest terror of the "hen party" factor, so we sort of re-capped by having him go through all the bags of tiny-baby clothes and loot after dinner. He was adorable, playing with the little toys, welling up at the bitsy sizes of the clothes, generally charmed. He woke up in full-scale panic; all of this is suddenly frightfully real and he is feeling the weight of responsibility.

Doesn't help that Taxes Were Done this weekend and we owe a ton, I'm sure. :)

Anyway, if you're expecting or know someone who is: try to talk them down out of the trees if they're flipping out. We are all messed up and will all mess up our kids. The goal is to be able to explain that you did it out of love, because you're still talking to each other by the time they figure out how messed up they think they are, right? I think there's no perfect way, but lots of right ways. I hope I still think so in a year, in five years, in twenty-five years. Wish me luck.

Long post: pregnancy loss and difficult days

2010-10-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

I strongly believe that one is never given more than one can handle in life... but that we are tested, strongly tested. This thought is the candlelight I plod toward through the deepest darkness that comes into my life. Today (well, technically yesterday), while certainly not one of my darkest days, is surely a trial.

It's Pregnancy Loss and Infant Remembrance Day today (well, technically yesterday). I didn't know this when I was getting up and going about my morning. Now that I know, I can't resist saying a few words you've probably heard before from me, again.

We came late to the game of trying to conceive: we were 37 and it was our 19th wedding anniversary when we discussed the issue after years and years of thinking we didn't want children, or were "not ready" for them. Pat was suddenly, passionately in favor of the idea. It took me only a day or two to get over my cold feet; I had been the enthusiastic one years before, but had so long set aside the notion that I was totally diffident. I made an appointment for a check-up with my ob/gyn to see what he thought. While he was "under the hood" doing all the annual exam stuff, he offered to remove my IUD... and, although I had thought I'd have to make an appointment for a surgical removal later, simply yoinked it, showed it to me (I saluted it -- after all, it did yeoman service), and told me to go get pregnant.

Get pregnant we did, as easily as some people catch cold. But stay pregnant, we could not. Six times, over the last few years, we experienced the roller-coaster of emotions that goes with early pregnancy loss, most times from thrombophilia, and a couple times from low progesterone. We went to a fertility specialist, who took one look at (fat ol') me and decided not even to test my husband; after lots of tests on me for fatness-related causes, he found only thrombophilia -- and refused to test for the low progesterone even though I had my short luteal phases well documented. He resolved to put me on heparin once a pregnancy had hung on long enough to be vigorous.

But after two more miscarriages --one horrible, with me waiting for six days to pass the dead tissue I knew was not viable-- while under his care, both due to low progesterone (and his callous scoffing at me when I told him I was sure it was low), I asked him in exasperation what the next step was. His solution was intra-uterine insemination -- an expensive way to inseminate a human ovum.

I was smart enough to realize that this did nothing to correct the progesterone problem, and get the baby far enough along to benefit from blood thinners. So I fired this doctor and went to a nurse practitioner with my charts. She confirmed immediately that I had low progesterone and prescribed it every month from ovulation until menstruation.

Progesterone wasn't good for my state of mind, and cost a ton. It disrupted my sleep patterns and made my body tender and leaky in unpleasant ways that interfered with my sex life (already suffering from a surfeit of scheduling and pressure). If I missed a dose and was late on the next, I would be dooming any zygote that was trying to nuzzle into the uterine lining. My stress levels soared.

During the three years described above, I couldn't take really any over the counter medication for colds, virii, headaches, muscle aches, sleeplessness, stress, my rosacea or other allergies, etc. I logged a lot of sick days. My boss wasn't happy. I wasn't happy.

We miscarried again, very early, while taking progesterone. We quit trying to conceive and decided to adopt. I took a moral stand on an issue at work that eventually caused me to quit my job. Then I got into an ugly battle over unemployment insurance. I was interviewed many times by people who liked my resume, but some found me overqualified, others found me overpriced for the depressed job market, and the most promising found me toxic, once they asked the terrible question of why I'd quit my last job and got an honest but heavily redacted answer.

All of a sudden I was 40. I had promised myself that if I couldn't deliver a baby before I was 41, I was too damn old to keep trying. And I had quit trying to conceive even before that.

And it helped. My stress level started receding, slowly. Sex was fun again.

In February, I got tipsy. I took cold medicine. I drank so much caffeine (by accident!) that I had heart palpitations. I ate some really unsafe, marvelous food: raw seafood, rare beef, lunchmeats, bleu cheeses.

One day I was driving to the grocery store and was feeling emotional. I knew that as I was unemployed and we were broke, adoption would be hard. But that was okay! I'd buck up, hitch myself up by my bootstraps, and we'd knock their socks off. Yes. We just had to commit to waiting a year or two to prove our financial worth. And if they never approved us, because of our looming student loan debt, well, then, we'd been all right together for 21 years of married life and almost five years dating before that. We were partners. We were a team. We were complete.

At the grocery store, I had a dizzy spell. I fell against the car, and when I did, my breasts felt horribly sore.

I knew I was pregnant, with bitter certainty. And I would be damned if I would put one more cent or one more bit of effort into this dreadful lost cause. I didn't even want to tell Pat. I wasn't even going to buy a pregnancy test. Screw it!

And driving home, I had waves of nausea. I decided to use an ovulation predictor strip as a makeshift pregnancy test (it can be done!) because I still had a bunch of them laying around and God knew I wasn't going to use them for their stated purpose.

The little fucker was all aglow with two pink lines before I could set it on the counter.

So I agonized for a while, 'til Pat got home and the doctor's office had closed for the weekend, and then reluctantly told him we had to buy pregnancy tests. He was stoic but unhappy. We went out and bought the least sensitive brand available. We didn't want any false hopes.

This test, too, was positive before it could be set down. I burst into tears.

We cried all weekend. Neither one of us wanted to go through it again.

On Monday, I still tested positive with the remaining test. I called my doctor's office and he sent me to the lab. I tested positive there, too. Immediately, they put me on progesterone and heparin. Slowly, during the slowest, most treacherous feeling first trimester, we began to feel hope. Then delight. Then awe, as the baby's growth and vigor dwarfed all of our prior expectations.

And now, I live in mixed faith and fear, a weird mixture of wary joy. I am 35 weeks pregnant now, with our little boy baby. And every day I try to banish my concerns and live mindfully and blissfully. But it is hard.

The doctor is worried about my blood pressure and monitoring me for pre-eclampsia. His suspicions are reinforced by my age, weight, the fact that I'm a first-time mom, etc., but also by the tendency of one of his nurses to get erroneously high blood pressure readings from me. Every. Time. Even though nobody else does.

So. Today.

We went in for our non-stress test (where they monitor the baby's heartbeat and how it rises and falls after s/he moves -- more active/reactive is better!) We are having these once a week. I have the nurse wait to take my blood pressure until we have done the test, as sometimes it's up when I first get there.

Only while I am sitting for the test, I get uncomfortable. My blood pressure soars. The nurse gets a reading of 150/110 and lets me wait another 10 minutes before retesting.

Then the improbable: the doctor, too, gets a reading off the scales. He doesn't like it and sends me across the street to the hospital where we will deliver.

They monitor the baby, even using the Baby Bothering Device to make sure he's awake (it looks like a cheap black plastic pepper shaker, but it vibrates/buzzes and it scared the bejeezus out of the kid, who went rigid from head to toe and then squirmed for all he was worth). They take my blood pressure every 15 minutes. When I am uncomfortable, it is up. When I lie down, it falls to very normal. They take some blood to check for bile and stuff from distressed organs (a sign of pre-eclampsia). They take a urine sample to test for protein leaks (same thing). They lose the urine and waste 1/2 hour looking for it before they finally ask (let!) me to pee again and just test that.

Four hours. Tax day, do or die, since we filed for extension in April and things have inevitably come up to make us procrastinate this month. I'm fine, but they tell me that this will probably be a weekly occurrence. When I am being released, they tell me that my doctor wants to see me twice a week and that this might be a TWICE weekly occurrence. Call my doctor to find out what time Tuesday they've scheduled me for. And can I do this 24-hour urine collection, please? Starting right now?

No, I cannot. I have my shower tomorrow. Can't leave the shower to ferry urine to the hospital, sorry, NO.

So we come home, irate, thirsty, starving, and grab a burger on the way in. We eat like ravenous antisocial dire wolves, while assembling tax receipts and things. I get about 20 phone calls, most of them stupid.

One of the calls is Mom. Can I call the exterminator to see if he'll come check the traps he put in the attic day before yesterday, because he doesn't want us to have dead things upstairs over the weekend? (He FINALLY showed up to plug the hole we knew they were coming in through... his employee refused, but offered to set snap-traps at $125/visit. No, thank you. We can set snap traps. Great guy, too -- except that he pushed aside food being prepared by a pregnant woman to spread out used, bloody, dirty rat traps on my kitchen counters like a direly grim Tarot spread, and risked having his head bitten off by me... which I didn't because he is Mom's friend.) I didn't want to call him, because I wanted a bath and he has shown disconcertingly inconvenient timing in the past... so I had Pat climb up the attic and check.

Of five snap traps, four had dead rat residents. Eew! So much for closing the hole... either they are still getting in, or there is a whole condo of them up there hiding in the rafters. Two were little juvenile rats. We hate killing them because we like them: shiny, healthy mammals with whiskers like plastic filament and inquisitive faces. But they need to get the fuck out of my house, because a baby is on his way. Pat took them away, but he doesn't want to do it anymore. I don't blame him. Between rat traps and volunteer wildlife rescue, we end up handling a lot of animals with rigor mortis, who have assumed the shape of the letter "L" -- and now that I'm pregnant, he is doing ALL of the corpse-wrangling for us both. Poor man. Anyway, I'm convinced that the answer may be NOT putting peanut-buttered traps up there where they like the aroma -- can't we bait traps with something they hate? Is that illogical? Sure, but ... aaaaaiiiiiieeeeeee!!!

Then we couldn't find our W-2s. Eventually we did. And we had to go through our medical bills again (which is just cruel today) and my business receipts (which is just cruel anytime, but that's my innate brilliant bookkeeping speaking.) Taxes are ridiculously frustrating, and I am sure verrry good for my blood pressure. Wheee!

But eventually we took a dinner & movie break with Robert, and saw Red, which was rather good (how could it not be? It's a Warren Ellis adaptation.) This is probably the last movie I'll try to see before baby gets here: I can't sit comfortably in any position, and now that I know it rockets the blood pressure, I'm going to excuse myself. I even took in a pillow to render the seat-back tolerable. Nonetheless, I feel much better, although uncomfortably full-tummied and heartburny, with major pain from pubic symphysis disorder, and still quite aware that I need to start a 24-hour urine collection, and still a little freaked out about taxes and rats and pre-eclampsia and stuff like our shitty, shitty Senate. You know. Stuff.

It's never more than we can handle, right? Right? Just please give me one more month (-ish) and let this child enter the world healthy, so I can stop feeling like my body is a perilous habitat. Just this once, let me be a haven, not a hazard.

International blackmail!

2010-09-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

So, Pat is a Fulbright scholar. In 2004-2006 we went to Peru to complete his dissertation research project. Upon our return, things fell through during the analysis and write-up phases, and he eventually dropped out ABD ... following in my footsteps (except I wasn't yet ABD; I was in the dissertation proposal phase when my committee chair told me she was not interested in my project, and I decided I was not about to spend another five years trying to reconstitute my committee out of unwilling and laissez-faire profs, after waiting for her arrival and then for her help for, quite literally, years.) We are understandably a little bitter and sensitive about the outcome of so much invested time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears -- even though I mean it when I say "I regret nothing."

The co-director of Pat's project has serious problems with the National Institute of Culture in Peru. Because the INC keeps raising objections to the final project report (on account of analysis and write-up not being full, among other things, like the project design that they okayed in the first place!), Carmen cannot work in her designated field until they sign off this project. This is understandably a source of despair and stress in both hemispheres.

Carmen sends letters cryptically stating (some of) what the INC wants. Pat sends back revisions and data, and tries to call her at the (always dead, because stolen-or-sold-or-something) cell phone numbers she sometimes forwards. We have never reached her at a phone number she's given us. Three times, these revisions and data have been accompanied by money to meet Carmen's demands, because traveling to Lima and greasing the hands of bureaucrats doesn't come free. Then, there are months or years of silence, until, SURPRISE! A new and more plaintive letter, and/or rumors through colleagues who are still working in the field there, demanding different conditions be met.

Kafka had no notion of the dimension of frustration that this process has assumed. It is off the chart. We are afraid to travel to Peru because we honestly do not know if we'd be nabbed, right off the plane; it cannot be set right from afar by us, because the INC ignores all our correspondence; sporadic demands for information that Carmen KNOWS does not exist, and for more money, continue to fall upon us ... usually at the worst possible time.

A few months ago, Carmen got former colleagues to contact us on her behalf. Tired of this process or simply incompetent beyond belief, she has badmouthed Pat to every official and friend we know who works in the area; appalled friends contacted us, tried to distance themselves from our reputation, and asked us to please please for the love of God help poor innocent Carmen.

Pat submitted everything she asked (as he has done every time) and explained where and why information didn't conform with INC expectations (often having to do with Carmen's ... eccentric record-keeping or ... liberal interpretation of instructions, but even more often having to do with an approved research design that does not match regulations made after the fact.)

Months of silence.

Tonight, a demand for $1,300 with an itemized bill for some seriously inefficient bureaucratic costs and re-studies of the site involving graphic artists and topographers (no receipts, and we never agreed to any of this nonsense) with an implicit threat that "people [she] talked to at the INC" believe she could have been charging him a retainer all this time... but she's not asking for that, yet. But she can't work yet, she says, so she needs our help...

We don't want to keep shelling out. We can't. We don't have the money. We have a baby due in 2 months. And it's all such incredible bullshit. We are furious, alarmed, and depressed. When will this woman stop asking for money? Will she blackmail us forever? Is this, in fact, blackmail? Or what?

Anyway, yuck.

Life isn't all lemons. But oh, how I wish I knew how to make lemonade out of Carmen's predicament. I like her and I want her to be happy, free to work as she pleases, and prosperous ... but I can't be responsible for her forever. The money has definitively run out. What now, what now?

In more positive news:

1) I finished knitting that bloody annoying denim blue soaker which has been inhabiting my needles for, what, 2 months? and can get on to more interesting knitting. Yay!

2) Pat's building his guitar.

3) ... and he already built the crib that we bought for baby. :) OH MY GOD WE HAVE A CRIB!!!

Sending wishes for love, tranquility, and hopefully prosperity your way. Hope you don't have any nasty surprises waiting in the wings, as we always seem to.

Not my most useful of weeks so far...

2010-09-22T11:43:00.001-07:00

I'm having more discomfort -- it's hard to sleep, eat, or concentrate. So I haven't been at my most effective. Even so, I hope to have a whole stack of things done by the end of the week...

1) Applying to jobs. The EDD is demanding that I come in next Tuesday to prove to them that I am upholding my end of the deal by searching for work. I contend that I'm doing a better job upholding my end than they are doing upholding theirs, as they still owe me 3 weeks' compensation (that they will never pay) due to I-think-deliberate-but-could-be-thinking-like-a-conspiracy-theorist paperwork snafus at crucial times, and 4 weeks' compensation as a result of general inefficiency. As I sink into further debt as a result of their ineptitude, it's nice to know that they feel they cannot trust me. Hey! EDD! I've got an idea -- HIRE ME! I applied, oh, 10 months ago... never heard anything back from you, though, after the 4 hour test and application process. So I'm documenting the job search, which is a weird thing to do after months and months of "I send the resume and wait. Nobody ever responds." Fortunately for me, 4 opportunities arose within 2 weeks, and I am qualified for all of them. Unfortunately for me, at least one of them was an online spam factory which managed to send me 11 emails in 1 hour, trying to get me to commit to financial aid to go to their pet diploma mill. D'oh!

2) Fixing up the house. There are lots of projects that need doing, and having caught another cough (I'm better now mostly), I also let the maintenance slide. Just catching up with dishes and laundry may do me in... whether I get to any bigger projects will be a mystery. Pat has been a dynamo getting things done, but I have more time and a backlog of my own...

3) Sewing. I have 8 diapers pinned, 2 sewn-but-awaiting-snaps, and 4 cut out but not pinned. I need to sew at least 8 more, and a raft of fleece soakers and stuff, and postpartum pads and nursing pads (those sooner than later as I have discovered that I am a mammal).

4) Getting approved/registered to donate cord blood. This is a hell of a process, involving a 20 page application that I have to fill out and then get my doctor involved with filling out. By two weeks from now. I'm trying!

5) Getting immunized against Pertussis. Thanks to the hammerheads who won't immunize their kids because they think Jenny McCarthy is a doctor, we have a full blown epidemic here. I cannot count on herd immunity protecting me or my child. Tomorrow there is a clinic for this, and I have the Dr.'s go-ahead.

6) Cooking at least a little. I would like to make some quality food for us! We've been eating so much junk.

But here's that diaper bag picture I promised you. It's pretty enough that I am still cruising on cheer from having it done...

...and I DID apply for jobs and have slogged through SOME paperwork and I've got my knitted soaker halfway into the decreases, which means there is thank God an end in sight to this thing being on my needles, and this morning I even made breakfast from scratch -- polenta and apple butter, carbolicious! So I just need to hang in there.

Hugs, and I will try to find time to post something thought-provoking that isn't just about me being busy and crabby. But I don't guarantee it, because I AM busy and crabby these days. :) May your days be filled with love and only the good kind of busy.

Drama!

2010-09-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

We went to our game last night, and when we came back, about 11:30, we went immediately to bed to wind down and go to sleep. I had been uncomfortable for hours; the baby had been slinging himself around and changing position, and has perfected the left turn signal. When I lay down, I was shocked to discover that my bump was several inches lower than before (earlier today, the bump was 3 inches or so above the top of my navel and sloped gently from there -- after the shift, the bump was below the bottom of the navel.) The bump was ROCK HARD compared to its usual firm-but-not-hard status, and the baby was evidently in a really different position. I had had a couple contractions before 2 p.m. but none since.

After verifying that the baby was kicking, doing a couple "cat-cow" exercises and a few pelvic tilts (all of which help to reposition the kid if he's doing crazy things), I fell asleep. But by 4:45, I was up again. Same discomfort, same hard belly, same low slung bump. Pat was up having an attack of AIP and restless; he confirmed that something was new, and advised me to call the doctor on call to get reassurance.

So I did! And the doctor advised me to swing by the hospital for tests, as he couldn't be sure over the phone.

They wheeled me up from the E.R. to the maternity ward and put me in a labor & delivery room with my name on the door. The sweetest nurse ever (Janell) came to reassure me that she was glad I'd come in, having seen my file, and put me on a fetal monitor. She let us know the baby's heart is a "rock star" and that he is doing just fine, and that this just seems to be a ruder entry than most into the comforts of late pregnancy.

Donuts for breakfast, so the carbs can help Pat avoid a resurgence of the attack. And now I am mighty sleepy. But so grateful the baby is okay, and that we have certainly picked the right hospital, and that we are well and evidently not crazy paranoid to have checked on our little one.

This morning we saw cattle headed out to get their breakfasts, steers practice-raping one another, whole murders of crows flapping around against the graphite-gray sky, a deer, many black-faced white sheep, scrub jays, and all the other early morning wildlife. Driving was a dream, both on the highway and the back roads. The world is so beautiful when washed by relief.

I'd post pictures, but we ate it too fast: summer squash soup

2010-09-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

I just improvised something delicious, and thought I'd share. We devoured this stuff -- which ended up very thick and creamy and chowder-y.

Summer Squash Soup

For soup:
3 summer squash, such as yellow crookneck squash, finely chopped
1 ear of corn, cut off the cob and scraped for "milk"
4 cups water
1 package of "semillas" -- Mexican, squash-seed shaped pasta
your favorite stock powder or cubes to season the water to taste
powdered chipotle chili, to taste (I used perhaps 1/2 teaspoon)
powdered bay leaves, to taste (I used perhaps 1/4 teaspoon) -- or a bay leaf!
powdered cumin, to taste (I used perhaps as much as a teaspoon)
1/2 cup milk

For topping:
1/3 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons white onion, freshly minced
1 - 2 tablespoons of your favorite spicy sauce (I used homemade sriracha that Pat made last week)

Cook 2/3 of squash with water, whole bay leaf if using, and bouillon until tender, then remove bay leaf and puree into a uniform liquid with immersion blender. Add uncooked squash, corn, pasta, and seasonings to liquid and cook, stirring until pasta has cooked (otherwise it will stick fiercely). When pasta and vegetables are tender, remove from heat and let cool a few minutes. Pasta will continue to "plump up" and thicken the soup. I added the milk at the last moment before serving.

Stir together topping ingredients and put a spoonful or two on top of each serving. You could get fancy and dress this up with cilantro if you felt like it -- we kept it simple.

Mmmmmmm.

Hey, I finished my diaper bag! Pictures later this week or so. It turned out really pretty!

Oh, and another oh hey! Hey, that 24-hour collection for a kidney function test? Predictably, my kidney function is fine. Nice to know, though.

Diapers and stuff so far...

2010-09-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of sewing four more "snail shell" type diapers made with the Shar's Newborn pattern, as described in an earlier post (they're cut out and everything) and am making this adorable diaper bag in shades of deep teal with lemon yellow lining, and a lemon yellow, teal, and aqua floral fabric for contrast. I am making the straps longer because I am of a ... robust build and like long straps. Here are my fabrics, tumbled willy-nilly on the ironing board.

So far, this is my progress on the baby's "stash" (I took inventory for Emily and as a "state of the union"):

Newborn size:
4 snail shell diapers, in progress
4 snail shell diapers, completed

6 Darling Diapers pattern diapers, made as all-in-ones with a fleece outer

4 knitted soakers

Small size:
1 knitted soaker, denim blue, in progress
1 knitted soaker, yellow, finished but in the "level up" box for when baby is bigger
I am also going to tie-dye 8 second-hand prefolds to hide some permanent stains

Accessories:
Diaper bag, in progress
16 diaper doublers, in microfiber-backed flannel

32 cloth baby wipes, in terrycloth-backed flannel

a few hats (and more to come)

Baby fever!

2010-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

I've sewn 4 diapers this week. Doesn't sound like much, but they are pretty neat diapers, with a waterproof liner (they still need official "stuffers" so that I'm not wedging a ginormous prefold in there).

I am sewing a diaper bag. Oh, it's going to be pretty, but I hate cutting out fabric and I am currently taking a break in the middle of THAT miserable process.

I am researching donation of cord blood. It's a bitch to donate it to the public banks, whereas it is really easy to bank it privately. Let me give you some links in case you want to replicate my research -- which you will have to if you want to donate, because the public banks are on a by-case basis: www.marrow.org or www.parentsguidecordblood.org have lists of public banks in case your hospital, like mine and the vast majority, are not collection spots. If your donation can be accepted, they will send a collection kit for you to the hospital. (My doctor strongly approves, so I suspect that IF I am accepted, he'll make it easy.)

Tonight is my first childbirth preparedness class. I need to bring two pillows and a snack and something to drink and notebooks and pens. Squeee!!!

Tomorrow is one of my every-two-week checkups with my obstetrician. I'll get the results of that ridiculous 24-hour urine test. I am actually starting to worry about pre-eclampsia, despite having zero symptoms.

Next Tuesday, I get to see the baby -- we have an ultrasound scheduled. I don't think we are apt to pay for a 3D/4D ultrasound, because we both agree they don't look like much even though they kinda do, and we are so close to seeing him in person.

TOMORROW IS WEEK 30 AND I HAVE ONLY 10 MORE WEEKS TO GO (or however long the baby feels like being there). OhmyGod.

Night before last, we SAW the baby kick. I had been sitting back in my chair because I noticed I could feel separate little limbs (feet!) with my hand, pressed against my tummy up above my belly button (which is a freaky place for the uterus to be). Pat had felt it too and was looking moist around the eyes. My hand was still caressing little feet, when it got KICKED off my belly, and when I looked in astonishment, I could see those kicks making my whole abdomen jump. It's the only time so far,* but Pat and I were shocked and delighted.

He's been dancing around me any time I'm in range, like I'm some kind of fertility tiki, running his hands along my pregnant belly and breasts and grinning and giggling like a shaman (or a fool). I am not only not ashamed to resemble the Venus of Willendorf, but feel privileged to resemble her -- I feel huge and sexy and vital and potent and magical! (And resemble her I do... except I have features instead of hair or a mask, and I am pleased to announce that I still have hands and feet.) No jiggle or sag offends my critical eye now; I praise them all for doing their jobs.

My best friend, who will be my doula, has intimated that she is going to knit me a soaker. This is a mission of mercy; I am sick to death of knitting them even though I enjoy knitting. They are too easy, and easy is boring. (I know very well that all of this will change.)

Even my 6-year-old friend has baby fever: all of her dolls and paper dolls have had babies now. It's official... being pregnant is the coolest with kids. She delights in asking, "how many people are in this room" and being scrupulously sure to count the baby. And she is excited to know that he's a little boy; she says, when he's as big as she is now, or maybe 4, she will teach him how to play games... but she soberly informs me that she'll be older then.

*ETA: baby decided to make a liar of me by doing it again as soon as I posted this. Yay baby! Okay, back to cutting out fabric and hoping he can't learn cuss words in utero. :)

Diapers!

2010-09-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

I've only finished two of this particular pattern, but I have 8 others in various Fordist stages of construction... as I prefer to assembly line things together.

This style of diaper is called the "Snail Shell" diaper and was invented by one of the smart cookies at Diaper Sewing Divas (requires membership, free) -- so a big shout out to "Mad Skills" for her tutorial. I modified the Shar's Newborn pattern to this style, since other people on the BabyCenter diaper sewing forum really like it on newborns. The Snail Shell features a waterproof elasticized inner layer that holds the absorbent pad, and a fitted outer of any fabric preferred. It can be cute, unbulky, and relatively inexpensive to construct.

Sewing PUL (the waterproof stuff) and FOE (fold-over elastic, used on swimwear, lingerie, and diapers) is a special nightmare. However, I won't need too many of these in each size... because unless his mess manages to escape the waterproof layer, I can just change the absorbent pad when baby gets here. Woohoo!

Better!

2010-09-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

I went to the chiropractor on Thursday and ... what do you know, he really helped the pubic symphysis pain! As in, what used to be torture (standing up, walking, especially rolling over in bed) is now simple, and I can lift my knees when I walk again instead of shuffling. I still have the rather fetching waddle I'd developed, but it now includes OMG I can move my hips! Yay! And this seems to have scooted DOWN the baby a little, with less pain right along the front of my uterus and which mutes his movements from gut-busting punches to constant thumping and wiggling. I think this is how it's supposed to be; the alternative would have meant we went extinct during evolution, as a declawed housecat could have eventually taken me down and worried me to death. Really, I am feeling much less pathetic.

The reason I went is that I read in a "hey fat ladies, watch out for unnecessary interventions" type website that fetal malposition is one of the main reasons for the high rate of C-sections among obese mothers. They recommended chiropractic care as something that can help prevent malpositions. Being as how I want to avoid C-section complications, I am all for it... but since I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome, I have always avoided chiropractors because manipulating my loose joints (including spinal joints) is not the best idea in the world. Usually. This time seemed okay although it left me with inexplicably horrible butt bruises.

I'm feeling much less pathetic, despite having caught Pat's once-per-quarter "teacher's crud." I can't really medicate, but I can make do with hard candy (honestly, although I can have cough drops they make me feel loathsomely queasy right now) and garlic honey (it makes acceptable cough syrup) and by gargling warm salt water when I feel gross enough to make it seem like a preferable option.

I bought used prefold diapers from a diaper service, and to my pleasure, only seven of the 2 dozen retain any yucky looking stains (we let rust stains from pins pass.) We're going to tie-dye the gross-looking ones, so it's win/win! Fun project in the future.

And... really REALLY good news yesterday. I had been scheduled for the childbirth prep class at my hospital Right! Up! To! The! Minute! as in the last of the 5 sessions was actually to take place on my due date. Buuuuuuuuuuuut when the hospital called me to POSTPONE the class for a week, they caught me on stressful ol' Thursday and I whined explosively at them and they sought an accommodation and got me into a very full earlier class -- next Wednesday! Yayyyyyyy!!! So I should know what I'm doing before I'm actually doing it. At least as well as anyone does who is not surrounded by other people doing it, first. :)

Mashed potatoes and cube steak for brunch this morning (with pickled cucumbers as a bright note.) How bad can the day be?

Love to all of you, and I just wanted to confirm that I am not ALWAYS freaking out.

This week!

2010-09-01T09:51:00.001-07:00

So, last week was crazy -- we spring cleaned all of the house except the bathroom (I have to dig out all the useless ends and bobs from the cabinets and throw them away, and my temper got the best of me so I am waiting until the job doesn't piss me off... it's hard bending right now!) We did it because 1) we're nesting and 2) we had a rat in our attic. We caught him (and poor bastard wasn't killed by the trap because he was the size of a small to moderate pony, so we dunked the trap into a bucket of water because hitting him with a brick seemed inaccurate and potentially worse). Unfortunately, we heard another afterward, so we had to clean up for the exterminator.

And this week is crazy -- the exterminator wants to charge $120 for setting a snap trap (which will cost us approximately $8 to do again) and refuses to rat-proof the attic even though we know where they are getting in from the vacant neighboring house (they connect). Pat is sick with his once-per-quarter headcold and I desperately do not want it!! I am doing a 24-hour urine collection so that they can test my kidney function because they are worried about my blood pressure because ONE of my doctor's nurses does not know how to take blood pressure readings on obese women like me and she inevitably gets readings like 160/90 (whereas the doctor and everyone else get 120/70 every time) so they are afraid of preeclampsia and I AM NOT LETTING THEM INDUCE ME EARLY ANYWAY because I don't want continuous fetal monitoring, to be trapped on my back without being able to labor freely in whatever position I want, or have my water broken because I am too fat for external fetal monitors, because I don't want an elective C-section. So this is unproductive. Except I now know that my bladder holds 18 ounces and that I pee approximately every 45 minutes and that I have pee in my fridge and God I hope the container is big enough for 18 oz. per event X 24ish events... and that it doesn't leak. And I am washing my hands so many times it's not funny, because who is going to get into the fridge with pee hands? And then I have to pour the "collection hat" contents into the pee bucket (and wash) and put it back in the fridge (and wash because I touched the bucket) and it's getting ridiculous, 3 washes per pee? Sheesh! And tomorrow I have to turn in the pee and get my blood drawn and go to the chiropractor because my back is boned and leave payment under the mat for the nice lady selling me used prefolds and go to our weekly lunch with the boys and then go to baby care basics class in the evening. Friday I'm off to A&T's for dinner and crafting (because she is my willing slave who will cut out diaper fabric and I hate cutting and OH! I just figured out that I have to make at least 6 diapers per week plus a cover or two and things like diaper bags/maternity clothes/postpartum pads/nursing pads/whatever catch-as-catch-can to be ready in time for the baby's earliest probable arrival horizon) and this weekend so help me Pat will barbecue for me sometime and I guess I'll have to finally get to the bathroom cupboards.

Make the pollo a la brasa from the recipe in the previous post. Not joking. Don't make the salad if you don't wanna, but do make the sauce. OMG.

(Gasp for breath, gasp for breath, gasp for breath....) So how are you?

Pollo a la Brasa

2010-09-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

While I'm not a gadget person, my mom is, and she's generous -- which means I have a lot of useless crap languishing around my kitchen. Finally, though, she struck gold with the NuWave Infrared Cooking System (no link; I'm unaffiliated). It. Makes. Awesome. Chicken. Crispy skin, nice browning, juicy. Yum.

When I think of chicken with crispy skin, I think of Pollo a la Brasa. This is a favorite Peruvian fast food. We've been missing it.

Note that your version will be a little inauthentic. You don't care. This is delicious even without being exact. (For authenticity, we would have to have access to three indispensable features of Peruvian cooking: chicha for the marinade, ajies amarillos (yellow hot peppers -- we just don't have them here), and algorrobo (carob) wood for the rotisserie. Oh, and a rotisserie. Nonetheless, if you season your chicken and cook it on a normal barbecue, preferably over mesquite (closer to algorrobo than our local red oak barbecue), you will have a delicious dish. And if you have an infrared cooking gadget, the texture will be perfect -- even though it'll lack the smoke.)

Traditionally, pollo a la brasa is served in halves or quarters, on a pile of crisply French fried yellow potatoes (Yukon golds are an adequate substitute, but Ore-Idas are NOT - although that's what I had last night), and accompanied by a spicy condiment puree (hold your horses), following a green salad dressed with mayonnaise thinned to vinaigrette texture with key lime juice, and garnished with slices of cooked beet, raw cucumber and tomato, and a few cooked green peas. All Peruvian meals except breakfast have two savory courses and a dessert: in this case, the grammar of the meal demands salad as the "primero."

Short of taking you to Lima to enjoy some wonderful Pardo's Chicken, or to Pacasmayo for Riko's Chicken, this is the best I can do.

Here is the recipe for the sauce. I thought the chick at Riko's was blowing me off and assuming I'd asked about the salad when she gave me lettuce, oil, and cilantro as ingredients for the salsa... she wasn't. Sorry, chick at Riko's. I should have listened. I made the sauce with a mix of yellow peppers and jalapenos, and half lettuce/half cilantro as the base (maybe, hmm, 1/2 to 1/3 cup of each?) and it tasted perfect. Don't use lemon -- use lime, if you require more acidity. I didn't tinker at all and it was yummy. YUMMY!

Pollo a la Brasa

1 3-lb chicken
brine:
1/8 cup salt
2 cups water
marinade:
4 teaspoons of dark beer
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons of white vinegar
2 teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons canola oil, optional
juice of 1 key lime, optional but delicious
a pinch each of ground dried rosemary and oregano
achiote or paprika for color, or ground mildish hot pepper for flavor and color, if desired (this would generally be aji mirasol in Peru)

Traditionally, the chicken is brined for 20 minutes before being marinated. I tried the brining step for the first time last night and wow! Dunno if that's why it was so juicy perfect, but it was delicious. So, give it a shot!

Marinade: mix all marinade ingredients. Rub all over chicken and allow to marinate for 20 minutes or longer. If it sits much longer, the vinegar will begin to "cook" the bird -- but the flavor will be deeper. 20 minutes should be fine. I actually put this in a zip bag, squoze out all the air, and let it do its evil business for about 35 minutes because I got lazy -- and it worked fine. So, no panic. Just, you know, not for hours.

Ideally: cook on rotisserie over fire of straw or algorrobo charcoal. Tolerably: barbecue over slow fire of mesquite charcoal. Or, you know, use your infrared thingy.

Serve in quarters atop individual mounds of freshly French fried yellow potatoes, accompanied by weird lettuce-based emulsified hot pepper puree. To swoon for.

Gingery carrot soup

2010-08-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've been wrestling with a resurgence of morning sickness, which I think is related to the late-2nd-trimester heartburn that has reared its ugly head. As a result, I didn't want anything this morning that didn't have ginger in it. I raided the wilty produce in my kitchen and came up with this -- which is delicious.

You may use nicer produce, of course. I can't help but think that that would only be a step up.

Gingery Carrot Soup

about 3/4 pound slightly bendy carrots, scrubbed and lopped into large chunks
3 just-larger-than-golf-ball sized yellow potatoes, scrubbed and chunked
2 withered, overripe red jalapeno peppers, stemmed, seeded, and cut into chunks
2 inches of shriveled gingerroot, peeled, cut into fine slices
water just to cover vegetables
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon garam masala powder
1/2 teaspoon or so of salt (go gradually; your spice powder may already contain it)

Put vegetables, peppers, and gingerroot in a pot and just cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil until they smell wonderful. Pierce vegetables with a fork to test doneness: if they seem done throughout, drain off about 2/3 of the water and blend until smooth with a handheld blender. Add milk until texture is pleasing (you will probably have to do this as you blend), then add spice and salt to taste.

The seasonings approximate the flavor profile of palak paneer, which is my very favorite thing when I can face spinach. The ginger might be a little fiercer than you want unless you are really into fierce ginger; feel free to halve it! This quantity of jalapenos doesn't make the soup really fiery, just spicy -- halve them, too, if needed.

What to expect from "What to Expect When You're Expecting"

2010-08-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

If you know anybody who is pregnant, please offer her the following advice:

Do not assume that the prenatal reference book with the most worrying factoids, statistics, and advice is the most accurate or complete one.

What I mean is, you don't want scary stuff in your house. Why? Because every symptom, every twinge, every stray thought has you running to your reference books and to google things, and you can scare yourself silly. Literally silly.

What to Expect is an immensely popular book. It's a frequently revised book. It's not inaccurate (not exactly). But it presents its material in such a way that it normalizes panic and can reinforce a small concern into a tsunami-level freak-out. (So can most web searches, so be careful.)

You don't really want a book that is vague about warning signs, or tells you what symptoms might lead to miscarriage. Really. These books are designed to talk you into taking seriously the gravity of what you are doing, and the importance of care. But what they SHOULD be designed to do, for those of us who already take seriously our pregnancies, is to reassure the patient when a symptom is likely normal.

Enter a few probably-better books, recommended by my no-worries-focused birth forum on BabyCenter:

The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
Recommended by a BTDT (been there done that) mom with five kids, because it contains information she'd never seen before during her previous pregnancies, and because of its matter-of-fact presentation. I have not read this book, but Amazon reviewers like very much that it tells you when NOT to worry versus when TO worry in simple chart form:
"For example, if a woman has slight spotting during the first four weeks of pregnancy, the chart tells her to notify a doctor during her next hospital visit. But if she has any bleeding at all during weeks 29 to 32, the chart indicates that she should tell her doctor immediately." (from the Amazon description of the book)

Your mileage may vary, but this book might have saved my doctor's sanity during my first trimester, when I was calling, crying and terrified, every other week when WTE told me I was probably miscarrying.

Great ExpectAtions: Your All-in-one Pregnancy Resource by Sandy Jones and Marcie Jones
This recommendation came from one of my favorite people on BabyCenter, who is sensible, calm, loving, and supportive, and who has a medical background. She likes it because she finds it to be all the things that I treasure in her... so I KNOW it's good. It also provides awesome new-parent information like the anatomy of a stroller -- AND the same authors wrote an early-childcare reference guide, too, so if you like it, there's more where that came from.

From the Hips: A Comprehensive, Open-Minded, Uncensored, Totally Honest Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Becoming a Parent by Rebecca Odes and Ceridwen Morris
This one is my personal recommendation. It's upbeat, non-judgmental (if you don't want to be berated about your controversial choices on hot topics such as cloth vs. disposable diapers, circumcising or not, breastfeeding or not, co-sleeping or not... this is probably your book), and presents facts simply and comprehensibly without dwelling on the creepy -- and without encouraging the reader to dwell on the creepy.

Dad's Pregnant Too: Expectant fathers, expectant mothers, new dads and new moms share advice, tips and stories about all the surprises, questions and joys ahead... by Harlan Cohen
This book is hilarious, reassuring, and informative. I got it for Pat when I found that he was reading just the "just for Dad" sections of WTE, and am incredibly glad that I did. First of all, he loved it. It knows its audience -- new daddies -- and it's written well to answer their questions and address their concerns. Secondly, it's brilliantly informative: Pat has been able to answer my questions about what is going on in my body, even when my other books and searches, and my obsessive personality, hadn't discovered the answers. And lastly, it brainwashed him -- for the better -- which I wouldn't have asked for but I ain't looking a gift horse in the mouth. The morning after I got this book I woke up to a sparkling clean toilet and bathroom. When I thanked him, Pat told me, "My book says that if you have to throw up, you shouldn't have to do it in a skanky toilet." Awwwww. Isn't that sweet?

I am sure there are more out there, but I know about these and felt like passin' on what I knew to you. And there we go. :)

West African peanut stew

2010-08-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

We had an exhausting but wonderful day, and I felt like making something nourishing and festive, but simple. I decided on my old standby, West African Peanut Stew.

It's SO perfect, even in the summer heat. Maybe especially in the summer heat. Give it a try -- it's customizable, so it should please almost everyone who likes peanuts.

Peanut Stew

2 to 3 cups water or low-sodium broth (tonight I used chicken)
2 cups protein of choice (tonight I poached a little bit of chicken in the broth, then added raw soaked chickpeas to make up the rest of the quantity -- they cooked in the broth)
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 small bell pepper, minced (optional but totally authentic)
Vegetables as desired: tonight it was about a cup of cauliflower florets and about 2/3 cup of sliced carrots, but green beans really shine in this soup
about a cup and a half of juicy diced tomatoes -- canned are fine
about a cup of peanut butter -- I prefer unsweetened and chunky, but go with your heart here
about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon red chili flakes (or cayenne to taste)
salt to correct seasoning, if needed (I never do)
juice of a lemon to correct acidity, if you feel it needs it (I did tonight)
chopped cilantro leaves, if you like them and want the color contrast (I did tonight)
cooked couscous or rice to serve alongside or under

If your protein of choice isn't cooked, poach it until it is. Cut into bite size and set aside to add later.

Put onions, garlic, and any hardy veg that you would like to be soft into broth and simmer until done to your liking. Add other vegetables in time to get them done to taste.

About two minutes from having the veg done, add the tomatoes, peanut butter, reserved proteins, and spices. Simmer, stirring, until peanut butter loosens and thickens the sauce into a uniformly creamy gravy. I really like a silicone spatula for this because it keeps the mixture from sticking at all to the pan.

Taste and correct seasonings as you please. Dish will be mildly spicy, with gentle acidity playing peek-a-boo behind velvety peanut butter flavor. Serve alongside or atop your couscous or rice (or millet, or whatever.)

Feel that all is well in the world, and you have gotten a hearty dose of protein and vegetables and whole grain (if you use brown rice or whole wheat couscous, which are actually much better than refined versions with this dish) with all that peanut oil.

Oh! And don't be afraid to scale this down, or to scale down the amount of peanut butter, if you are cooking for fewer than four big eaters, or if you don't want so much fat in... it does fine if you free-form it.

That's it! Enjoy!

Edited to add: I think the leftovers lose a lot in translation: the flavors get too muddied and homogenous. Pat told me he'd knife-fight me for them, and he doesn't seem to share my opinion. Soooooo... I'd recommend making less of this if you have less people, but Pat would probably make a big batch and eat all the leftovers. Your mileage may vary.

Love!

2010-08-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

It's my 22nd anniversary. I cannot imagine being without Pat, who has been my other half since 1983 or 1984. We became fast friends in our freshman year of high school and started going out together in our sophomore year. But it's all passed in the blink of an eye, and at the same time, a long, golden summertime.

I am 25ish weeks pregnant with my first baby, who wiggles constantly, letting me know he is there and ever so active. We got to see his face during the ultrasound earlier this week, and he looks like his daddy. He is big and healthy. (Really big, actually -- but my dad and brother are 6'7" and 6'8" respectively, so that's not terribly surprising. Also I am taking algal DHA, which makes big babies. I'm SURE they'll test my blood sugar, but those are thoughts for another post.)

I am 40 years old and, though I have never felt my age, I have never felt better.

Today we are spending the day in a whirl of home improvement, apple-farm visiting, beach walking, and diaper sewing (I suckered Pat into cutting out fabric for me.) Tomorrow, we'll take a leisurely walk at the waterfall at which we were married, and will go to a nearby tourist trap to eat gluttonously and wander around gazing at each other.

Life is good, and filled with love. Hope your day is just as glowing.

OMG OMG OMG

2010-07-31T18:15:00.001-07:00

We just got back from our tour of the maternity ward where we plan to have our baby.

(Breathe, breathe. Big milestone!)

It is awesome. Very quiet hospital, and with an excellent reputation (and having worked in insurance, I know the ones that do not have that excellent reputation, trust me). Baby vitals are taken in the same room with the mother whether she has a C-section or not. A labor pool is available, and there are squat bars available for all the birthing beds, and those green balance ball things, and they emphasize having moms get up and walk and change position to labor -- all on my list of things to worry about! Dads can sleep on cots in the mother and baby rooms if they aren't doubled up -- and except when there's a population boom, they feel no need to double up patients. They actively welcome mothers' birth plans, whatever they are. And they have a NICU.

This, plus two bird rescues (seagull -- an easy catch -- and owl in a box, both of which made it alive and lively to the center). What a great day!

Middle o' the Road

2010-07-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

I am a fangirl.

Those of you who grew up with me may know some of my, er, stranger obsessions with bands (yeah, I knew every word and note of every America song, when it was produced, who wrote it, which band members were recorded... not that that's weird or anything. I still remember a shocking amount of this stuff. Please don't remind me I'm using brain cells for this.) Or with books (there are numerous "young adult" books I reread every year, and so forth.)

One abiding and intense love is the groundbreaking music of David Bowie. Now, I know he has his performance-art moments and that sometimes they are of questionable taste, but always interesting. But that voice! From throaty growls to ethereal howls, always with a sly wink and an infusion of emotion -- how can you not fall in love with it? And his songs, almost always surreal, cutting-edge, and ... sometimes ... timeless.

So let me confess, I've never been a huge fan of "Boys Keep Swinging." I use the fast-forward on it half the time: its relentless march and zombie choruses really don't do it for me. No biggie.

Well, there are other bands I feel the same way about that I do about Bowie. Muse, absolutely. Blur, yes. And I've got a mix of Muse and Blur and some other stuff in the car.

Blur has this song called "M.O.R." (an acronym for Middle of the Road, which occurs in their lyrics). It's awful. For one thing, it's just awful. And for another thing, IT IS 90% "BOYS KEEP SWINGING."

Wikipedia says it's an intentional tribute to the chord progression that Bowie and Brian Eno devised for "Boys Keep Swinging" AND "Fantastic Voyage" (which is actually one of my favorites). Mmmmmaybe, but I say it's similar enough to the former song to be maddening. If I were Bowie, I'd have sued Blur for sure.

You be the judge!

Here's a decidedly strange video for "Boys Keep Swinging" -- the Thin White Duke is at his most manic and lunatic, complete with intolerable mugging at the camera, but it's worth hanging in there for the wackadoodle ending...

Here's an entertaining video of "M.O.R." -- which, although it does pass in... a Blur (Dr. Evil pinky finger to corner of mouth) ... is probably better than the A-TEAM movie. But their song is still a giant rip-off and still leaves me looking for the FF button.

And as a palate cleanser, a very nice live performance video of "Fantastic Voyage." Ahhhh, that's better.

Group guest post at Perfume Smellin' Things - top 10 of Summer!

2010-07-19T19:34:00.001-07:00

Hey folks, go check it out!

By the way, I have fallen even MORE deeply in love with Din Dan since I sent my entry to the blogmistress. It's my favorite thing, right now. Right next to watermelon, clean sheets, and feeling the baby kick. :)

Rwar.

2010-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

My doctor is using his concern over my blood pressure (seemingly unwarranted, but I'd rather be safe than sorry) to order extra ultrasounds of the baby. Neat! The Obstetrix office called me on Monday and told me to come in Wednesday (today), which seemed a little soon, but okay...

...until I got there today, and the bitchy receptionist kept me waiting for 10 minutes on my feet at her desk while she noodled around with three sets of paperwork, two of which were unrelated to any of the people waiting in the office. This, before she pretended she didn't have the form for me to sign in, so had to go to the other room to get it. She never greeted me or asked me who I was, just had me sign here please.

Then when the other receptionist got in, she triumphantly bragged about having kept someone waiting on the phone for over 10 minutes because, "you know, when it gets busy I can't get to you..."

Well, no shit, Sherlock. If you call that busy.

Then the scheduling receptionist (that's right, the third one) came in and said, "Linda? Are you Linda? Oh! I just tried to call you, but it must be at your home number (as if this were a dirty word). Your doctor wants you to come in every four weeks starting in week 24. He just didn't tell us that before."

Yes, and not before I drove to another freakin' CITY to your office, so I could be ignored and stand on my swelling feet while Miss Look-Busy finds more fake work to do so that she doesn't have to deal with the public all by her poor little lonesome -- argh! Where's my $9 for gas?

So I'm feeling a little bitchy.

On the other hand, I'm not feeling as weird and hormonal as the other day. For those of you who haven't been pregnant... yeah, I'ma sound crazy. For those of you who have been... yeah, I'm REALLY sorry because I always thought you folks sounded crazy before.

The other day: yum, blueberries and cantaloupe (both foods I loathe normally.) Yuck, beloved plums! (And chicken and jicama, but whatever. I don't feel strongly about them normally.) Then, walking down the pet food aisle at the grocery, I was struck by the weird sensation that... the pet food really didn't smell that bad. Almost appetizing. Ugh! And then I saw a newborn baby boy and then I heard a song that always makes me choke up because I associate it with miscarriage grief and then I fell the hell apart while I was driving home, great crazy-person sobs, not sad but certainly hormonal. If you're a Facebook friend you have heard this before, because the first thing I did was to ask people if I was a pod person: thank goodness other moms were able to confirm that this is a normal hormonal thing.

Brother Dave says that pregnant women are legally allowed to kill. I don't know about the law, but I think I shouldn't be encouraged. :D

Freak out!

2010-07-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

I had a couple rough days, and very rough nights. About a week ago, the baby kicked the heck out of me all day and I thought, good! But his kicks have been less and less dramatic (possibly because I've adjusted and given him more room -- I seem to have growth spurts, judging by my own discomforts, and who knows if they exactly match his?) He also seems to have changed his sleeping schedule: it was regular as clockwork for 2 weeks, and then ... not. I called the doctor's office yesterday and spoke with his awesome nurse Sonia. She told me to do a kick count, and call if it was low. I didn't have time as I was headed out the door, but the baby treated me to one wiggle and I felt okay about it.

Then, of course, being the stress-monster I am, I had remorse for not having done the kick count... which kept me from sleeping (in concert with my OH so lovely heat rash.) So I was fitfully awake all night. At about 3:20, I decided to do the kick count. Of course, after I drank juice and lay down to pay attention to the baby, I drifted in and out. I noted only one kick, and that was fully two hours after I'd drunk the juice. Nervous-making. So when 10 a.m. rolled around, I did another kick count. Nothing for half an hour. Nothing in 45 minutes. I lost patience, worried about the doc's long lunch hour, and called in again, saying I hoped I was just being paranoid BUT.... I spoke to his awesome nurse Fran and she asked me to come in at 1:30.

The baby decided to kick me as I was headed for the showers right before my appointment. I still went. Heartbeat healthy, baby looking normal, developing well... and the awesome doctor told me not to worry if the next couple weeks are pretty sporadic, as it's still early. Oh. But he didn't let me feel foolish, either, since he encouraged me to come in any time I was worried.

Do I give the impression that my doctor's office is awesome? Because it is awesome.

My mom asked me why I hadn't just leaned against the sink and turned on the garbage disposal -- which was her way to make my little brother wiggle in utero. I told her I thought it was cruel, but of course, um, we tried to scare ours with an air horn. Didn't work. I'm going to have to upgrade to vuvuzela.

Anyway, baby is fine (and kicking like MAD now... he's going to inherit his dad's sense of humor, I think), I can get some sleep now, and this is a glimpse into what it's like to be me and be pregnant. Eeeek!

All else is well. I've discovered uncured all beef hot dogs, which is a great cure to restrictive pregnancy food. On a wheat bun with mustard and a side of something veg, they're positively wholesome. Kind of.

Weather be damned, I think I'm making chicken and dumplings tonight, though. It's that kind of day.

EDIT: hot dogs won. But maybe chicken and dumplings tonight, we'll see. Baby is kicking like crazy this morning, too.

Anatomy scan

2010-06-29T18:33:00.001-07:00

Hi folks,

We had our anatomy scan today. Baby looks healthy, vigorous... and male. Both screening tests came back negative. We spoke with the genetic counselor and she doesn't have any serious concerns for the baby -- only one concern for me that suggests a visit from a geneticist might tell us more about the potential risks (a hemorrhaging risk and a heart abnormality risk -- again, neither one is confirmed at this point.) It was a phenomenally reassuring morning.

Tomorrow, we are at 20 weeks (and where did the time go?)

I hope that all is peace and love surrounding each of you today, too.

Well, surprise, surprise.

2010-06-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

Huggies did a study and found that diapers are too expensive for many families to afford.

Why not use cloth diapers and save OVER $100 PER MONTH? (Their excuses about laundromats are valid, but not universally.) Sheesh.

Whooping cough

2010-06-25T10:52:00.001-07:00

Please, folks, vaccinate your kids. I agree that if your child is allergy prone or if you have a family history of respiratory problems, you may want to look into a slower vaccine schedule where your child only gets 2 vaccines at any one time, so that you can keep track of and respond well to allergic reactions. But risking your child's life -- and the lives of others -- by not vaccinating is silly; this is a million times sillier if it's due to fear of autism, for which there exists NO link to vaccination. (Seriously. Get your information from scientists, not celebrities.) There, I've said my controversial piece.

For better or worse, but almost definitely because of the anti-vaxers, we're having a whooping cough epidemic. Wheee!

Edited to add: I just received a terrific email from Kristi at Newsy.com, who turned me on to an informative video on just this subject. It's worth a watch!

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

How'd the kimchi turn out, you ask?

2010-06-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

I put the kimchi in the fridge late last night. It could have stayed out another 12 hours or more to get more tart, but I liked my taste of it so much that I put it in the fridge. Note that our weather has been very cool and that this may have slowed down its fermentation.

It is the mildest, freshest tasting kimchi I've tasted. The chili powder finally decided to join the party and taste spicy, but not HOT spicy; the cabbage retains fresh cabbagey crunch and flavor; the tartness is pronounced but not squintworthy. I am glad I omitted fish sauce from this batch, because this is a lovely springy/summery flavor that would have been overbalanced by briny umami if the fish had joined the party. There's a substantial perfume of ginger, and a tangible but not brutal flavor of garlic.

If I wanted something more authentic, I'd add a little more garlic, a little more chili than 2 tablespoons or a jalapeno, serrano, or Thai bird chili for more fire, and leave it out for another whole day to get tart. And I might -- MIGHT -- add the fish sauce. But I am happy with this -- especially the texture of the green onions, sliced finely rather than left in 2 inch segments.

Easy Kimchi - new recipe

2010-06-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is a completely inauthentic recipe and seems like it will be pretty mild kimchi once it has finished fermenting, but my tastes of the unfermented product were delicious.

Easy Kimchi

1 medium-large napa cabbage, sliced vertically into eighths, then sliced in 2 inch segments crossways
1/2 cup salt
8 cups water
2 tablespoons coarse chili flakes (Korean chili flakes if possible) [edited: please consider raising this to as much as 1/4 cup, depending on your chili flakes!]
2 tablespoons sugar
one thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
four large cloves of garlic, minced finely
four large scallions (2/3 bunch), sliced into 1/4 inch slices
[edited to add: 1 jalapeno pepper, minced (optional)]

Mix water and salt, and soak cabbage. You will need to weight the top. For me, the ideal container was a plastic pitcher with a heavy bowl that nicely fit the pitcher's diameter. As the cabbage soaks, it will both shrink and float, and you want to keep it submerged. Soak for 2 to 12 hours, then drain well, rinse in several changes of water, and squeeze dry. (I used my salad spinner and followed up with gentle squeezing out.) Save the juice to top off your jars.

Mix all other ingredients in a separate bowl, adding a tablespoon of water or so to make a thick paste. Leave this paste for a few minutes to allow the chili flakes to swell. (You may cut down or omit the sugar; I have made kimchi several times without it and this is the first time with. It tastes dandy, but isn't necessary.) PUT ON KITCHEN GLOVES and lovingly massage the paste into your salted, drained, squeezed cabbage leaves until the coating is uniform.

Pack kimchi into sterile jars and top off with the reserved juice -- the red stuff with the seasonings first, then any leftover juice from the cabbage. You are aiming for 3/4 inch headspace. Squish down cabbage mixture so that juice fills all the cracks between and covers the top; you do not want air bubbles in your jars. Fasten jar tops loosely.

Allow to ferment at room temperature for 24-48 hours, until it smells and/or tastes tart. Then, refrigerate, and enjoy! This is a lactic acid fermentation that has awesome health benefits.

This seems to make a relatively mild kimchi. You can amp up the quantities of garlic, ginger, and chili flakes -- or add gochujang or minced fresh chilies -- to make a fiery one. I went mild for the sake of my buddy April, who wanted to try some milder kimchi.

This makes about 5 to 6 cups of kimchi. Believe it or not, the volume of the cabbage reduces by about 2/3 overall!

(It is more traditional to leave the scallions in 2 inch segments -- but I HATE them that way. The flavor is outstanding but they get a weird, tough, slimy texture I can't get down with. Slicing them finer is the answer to a Ducks-friendly kimchi.)

Good news for the contest winners...

2010-06-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

I finally got out to the Post Office yesterday and put your things in the mail.

I am so sorry for the delay; I caught an ear infection/sinus infection/bronchitis combination that was just wonderful without medication (and I knew this was coming ... every summer I catch something awful, plus Murphy's Law says that while I'm pregnant I will get something I'd rather medicate if I had the option... and I have a six year old friend and my partner teaches at community college, so I am much exposed to Schtuff.)

Kimchi soup is my favorite cure for colds and stuff, but I wasn't sure I could eat kimchi -- because of the fermentation. However, after some wild internet searching, I find that it's not only fine but beneficial to preggies. Okay! But I still didn't want to eat the (very old) kimchi from the back of my fridge's top shelf... so I am making a fresh batch today.

Anyway, kimchi soup: sour, but with fresh veggies and, if you like, protein to fit your preferences; spicy, but tamer than a big bowl o' kimchi; hot, which coupled with sour and spicy really clears your head. Ahhhh, comfort food. Plus, if you're really sick, you won't be able to smell your own garlic breath after!

If you like it enough to have oh, about a gallon on hand (or you have friends who will take a portion of it off your hands), make your kimchi from scratch (or purchase a dry "kimchi mix" from an Asian grocer with a Korean section and follow the easy -- practically scratch -- recipe there). You can control the fiery-ness, the sourness, and, hey, it's crisp and delicious homemade. There are recipes all over the Internet.

Crafty!

2010-06-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

I've been making cloth diapers. Not only knitting wool soakers to go over prefold diapers, but noodling around with making All-In-Ones (as convenient as disposables) to see how I like them.

Here are two AIOs made with the Darling Diapers free newborn size AIO pattern. I probably will make about a dozen or so in newborn size and then find a great pattern to make a couple dozen One-Size diapers, which baby can wear from small to toddler (they're adjustable via snaps.)

Oh, and disregard that reoccurring hideous tablecloth. It's plastic coated, so it's convenient to have on there for sewing and stuff: it doesn't pick up the hideous green lint from the sacrificial towel that forms most of the absorbent stuffing (there's also cotton batting) of these diapers. The exterior is yellow and green (gender neutral) fleece and the interior is yellow and green flannel.

Fun!

Go. Make. This.

2010-06-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

This spicy shredded carrot salad from Smitten Kitchen is the most delicious thing. It's a far cry from the usual things I do with shredded carrots, and a great way for me to get a couple of the 8,652,395,782 servings of dark yellows and greens I'm s'posed to be eating for the baby every day.

If you can't find harissa, don't hesitate to make this anyway. You need to make a paste of spicy ground chilies, cumin and/or caraway and/or coriander seeds (coriander adds something wonderful to the finished salad), olive oil, and water, and if you want you can add a little sun-dried tomato in pulverized or paste form and/or a little garlic. The professionally made stuff is the (delicious) elephant gun of the hot sauce world; you can't miss too badly if you sort of approximate it.

It's OMGWTF delicious without the feta, but the feta transforms it from something pure and spicy and slightly sweet to something balanced, salty, and darkly complex, so it's worthwhile here.

We have a winner! Actually, three winners! Results for drawing here!

2010-06-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to www.random.org for providing the random number selection.

For the first drawing, for Nina Planck's Real Food for Mother and Baby... the winner is ...(drum roll please)....

Anonymous (sejotess)!

For the second drawing, for Alice Domar's Conquering Infertility... the winner is ... (drum roll please)...

Jennifer (who submitted her request via email)

For the third drawing, for ovulation test strips, I needed two winners... each of whom will receive 25 test strips! And the winners are ... (drum roll please)...

Jennifer (again), and

Amy!

Congratulations, winners. I will email you requesting your mailing addresses today. Check your inboxes!

To everyone else -- I hope something wonderful comes your way today anyway. Best of luck, and thanks for participating.

Another wonderful thing to do with sardines

2010-05-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

...because Emily at Well Fed, Flat Broke is AWESOME and she was kind enough to take my recipe request. I want that platter at the bottom of the post: almondy fishy garlicky pate, fresh bread, mixed pickles, eggs -- yummmmmm!

If you haven't discovered a cooking blog you love and really, really trust yet... why not? I've got several I follow sporadically, and only a handful I follow as often as they update.

Em's blog is at the top of my list, because along with recipes that always hit the spot and have never let me down, it's got a warmth and serene joy to it that make me smile. I hate to let you see this recipe because it could so easily become one of those culinary Secret Weapons -- but this lovely lemon pudding cake has become my very favorite dessert. Yes, more favorite than my own gingerbread with lemon sauce. More favorite than my chocolate lava cake with creme anglaise.

Let me point you toward a couple other blogs, too:

How to Cook Like Your Grandmother: whether you're looking for a classic recipe or just want some down-home cooking, this is a nice place to find it. Also, Drew is awesome and provides resources regarding food health, cooking techniques, and the latest buzz in the health food community. Besides, I love a blog not too shy to post and love its (delicious) cooking disasters: butterscotch halfway turned to Butterfingers, for instance.

Pioneer Woman's blog: because your saturated fat ought to be handed to you by a smiling, chatty, simultaneously brass-tacks-country and urbane-and-modern farm wife. Don't you think? She loves her butter and beef. Site is super-huge, and PW is super-popular (heck, I have a copy of her cookbook on my shelf). I have never had one of her recipes fail, and some -- yeah, make her "fancy macaroni" and have the cardiologist's phone number handy -- better yet, share it with a herd of people -- are to die from. Er, for. Both. Anyway, say hi to "Mrs. Purple Alien Claw" for me. Heh.

Smitten Kitchen: more often than not, it seems that these are dessert recipes. I've tried out a lot of them on those of you close enough for me to feed. Sometimes fancy, but always with an old-fashioned, traditional feel. Happy-making. And we eat this outstanding tomato sauce about twice a week.

No Recipes: okay, I check this one... weekly instead of daily. But if you want things like authentically delicious Tonkatsu Ramen broth, this is the place to explore. (If you make that recipe, invite me over.)

Broke and Healthy: Simple, inexpensive, delicious things to do with cheap-as-dirt ingredients. It'd be easy to build a meal around any of the dishes featured here. Unfortunately, will stop updating quite as often now that the author has a Full Time Day Job. This is the recipe that hooked me.

If these don't ring your bell, for goodness' sakes go looking. I have a whole "bookmarks" folder full of cooking blogs I like, and refer to whenever I am bored or want to try something new -- but everyone ought to have one or two that they follow like an addiction. The ones listed above are easy to love.

The first taste is free.

Food for thought?

Calling All Prospective Parents & Parents! (reviews, prize giveaways)

2010-05-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

Note on the drawings: If you are interested in any (or all) of the following drawings, please leave a comment with an email address so that I can notify you, specifying the drawing(s) you'd like to be included in. Note: PLEASE follow the following protocol or another simple-to-figure-out-unless-you-are-a-spambot one for your email address: "handle at provider dot suffix." (I don't want you to get Nigerian scam letters, as I seem to be this month. Seven so far!) I will randomly select winners on June 10th or thereabouts. (If you cannot leave your address, please check back by June 15th to see if you won -- if I haven't heard from you again by then, I'll re-draw for the prize.)

Well. That was a mouthful.

The drawings are for:

1) Real Food for Mother and Baby by Nina Planck. This copy is signed by the author and addressed to Drew at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother. He generously forwarded it, but since I received two copies, my abundance is your gain. Stay tuned for the review below.

2) Conquering Infertility by Alice Domar, Ph.D. and Alice Lesch Kelly. This is an unsigned copy. It is, however, a wonderfully helpful book that I picked up when I was drowning in despair; it turned around my attitude and helped me to see fresh options and the pleasures in my world. It would be immoral for me to keep it if I can hand it to someone else who can use it.

3) A package of 25 ovulation test strips, expiring in about a year. They are internet cheapies and they work great. These particular ones are dip strips requiring the additional use of a Dixie cup or simulacrum (you can't just pee on them for maximum efficiency.) When you are trying to conceive, you go through these things like water: I ordered a huge number of them the month before I quit trying to conceive. I have only used one since then -- as a half-assed pregnancy test that turned out positive. (Does this work? Sure, if only to tell you to go get a quality pregnancy test. But these are not to be considered diagnostic, even so much as OTC pregnancy tests. They are made less carefully.) Note: I have two packs of these, but would like to spread the love if there are more than one entrant for them.

Again, let me know how to contact you and which prize or prizes you are interested in if you enter the drawing. Tell a friend who will loan you his/her new book or share her OPKs, and double your chances! Sorta. :)

Let me tell you a little about these items.

Real Food for Mother and Baby is a no-nonsense, eye-opening look at the pragmatics of feeding one's fertility, developing embryo through all the trimesters, nursing baby, and young child ready for solid baby foods. While there is a "crunchy" emphasis on organic meat, dairy products, and vegetables where practical, the book sets forth an easy to follow program. The emphasis is on eating real, sensible, healthy food -- not on a difficult "pregnancy diet," a laundry list of things that you must eat every day, or nutritional balancing requiring a higher educational degree in a relevant field. It's approachable (unless you are vegetarian -- in that case, it will annoy you badly). It's practical. It's eminently reassuring, or was for me. It's a lifestyle book that can set you free if you, like me, tend to be a stress-monster: it teaches that only the devil is in the details, and how to look at the big nutritional picture. And even if you are not yet Trying To Conceive, it can teach you how to eat a healthy, low-stress diet to increase your fertility and health for later. I loved this book, and it was a perfect antidote to all the "OMG eat this TODAY or else" books I had piled on my nightstand before it.

The only harsher criticism I have of Planck's book is that she occasionally gives advice that directly controverts well-substantiated concerns -- such as her exuberant recommendation of raw dairy products and relaxed view on lightly cooked and organ meats. That said, she never fails to mention the opposing view and to make it clear where her evidence is anecdotal or simply the result of belief. If you do your research for yourself, as she recommends, it will be impossible to say that she steered you wrong.

I think I've said everything I needed to say about Conquering Infertility above. If you are avoiding the phone because you don't want to hear yet another pregnancy announcement, if you cannot look at friends' children without bitterly painful jealousy, or if you think you are out of options to be a happy parent -- please, read this book. It may not be the one to help you, but it was the one for me. If you take a look at this one and it isn't resonating with you, by all means, please don't stop looking for the one that does. You deserve joy and you can have it. I promise you, love surrounds you, and happiness awaits you. Reach out for it.

As for the ovulation strips, what can I say? You put them in your pee. They tell you whether you're ovulating or not. If you're like me, that stresses you out. But if you're not, they can be either a great learning tool (I can tell the day I ovulate now, even without the suckers) or a great indicator of when you should(n't) be doing the "baby dance." And if you are already using them, hey, let me try to save you a couple bucks. :)

Hey! We have winners -- check today's blog posting for details!

More on the Pampers/cloth diaper debate

2010-05-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Awesome new visitor Heather gave me a terrific link to "The true story of Pampers Dry Max, Part 1: The Diaper Wars" on ZRecommends in the comments on my last post. It's worth a read, and I didn't want to risk anyone missing it.

Don't miss Part 2 and Part 3, which are already online.

Cloth Diapers - myths and facts

2010-05-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

This post is part of the Real Diaper Facts carnival hosted by Real Diaper Events, the official blog of the Real Diaper Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to cloth diaper education. Participants were asked to write about diaper lies and real diaper facts. See the list at the bottom of this post to read the rest of the carnival entries.

Please understand that I have no desire to offend any consumer of disposable diapers; this post is a response to outrageous corporate behavior.

Pampers recently launched a campaign against cloth diapers as a response to public outcry due to (and a distraction from) chemical burns and other skin damage in infants wearing their DryMax line of products. Note that this is a highly contested issue and the center of at least one lawsuit; however, I know several mothers (through BabyCenter) whose infants suffered the burns -- and I assure you the heartbreaking photos are of no common diaper rash.

Regardless, Pampers' "Myths and Facts" page is ludicrous and deserves some response.

Pampers' "Myth" #1: Cloth diapers are better for my baby.
Pampers' "Fact": Disposable diapers like Pampers were developed to offer babies benefits that cloth diapers could not meet. That goes beyond convenience to helping keep babies' skin dryer and more comfortable by reducing leaks and locking wetness inside the diaper in a way that cloth doesn't. As a result, doctors and parents simply don't see the same level of diaper rash that used to exist before disposable diapers.
No, doctors and parents DON'T see the same level of diaper rash that used to exist before disposable diapers: according to a FAQ at Jillian's Drawers (a cloth diaper store; perhaps not an unbiased source), "The rate of diaper rash has increased from 7% to over 78% since 1955, comparable with the increased rate of disposable diaper use."

As for the claim that disposable diapers keep babies' skin dryer and more comfortable, it may be outmoded to assume that cloth diapers do not. Cloth diapers can and most often do feature stay-dry liners of wicking fabrics, so that babies feel dry. Even if babies can feel wetness with cloth diapers, there is some anecdotal evidence that the experience can be beneficial to earlier potty learning. Also, cloth diapered children are customarily changed after every wetting; this is not always the case for disposable diapered children. I feel that the hygienic benefits of disposable diapers are largely mythical.

For what it's worth, I have used cloth feminine pads for years due to sensitivity to the paper ones: I am dryer in them, and indisputably more comfortable. All of my family has appallingly sensitive skin, and that's the fundamental reason I am choosing cloth for my baby.

Pampers' "Myth" #2: Cloth diapers are better for the environment than disposables.
Pampers' "Fact": In October 2008, the United Kingdom's Environment Agency published an update to its 2005 Life Cycle Assessment study on cloth versus disposable diapers. The update confirmed the earlier study's findings that there is no clear winner in terms of environmental impacts between disposable and cloth diapers in the U.K., once all factors such as water, energy, detergent, and disposal are considered.
This "fact" is entirely misleading. These studies were highly flawed; disposable products were greenwashed therein, and the laundering methods described are not typical of modern methods. If you're interested in wading through an angry dismissal of the horseshit factor, please click the link and read up.

Anecdotally, I can assure you that the majority of the HUNDREDS of cloth-diaper-using families who participate in the BabyCenter cloth diapering forums use "green" detergents with low environmental impact, and very many indeed use low-energy, low-water modern machines. Here's the skinny: it takes special care to keep reusable diapers absorbent, non-water-repellent, without smelly buildup, and hygienic. That said, the answer is LESS chemical intervention (and hotter water, to be sure): enzymes, softeners, optical brighteners/UV enhancers, whitening enzymes, essential oils, fragrances, and some say borates all damage the efficacy of cloth diapers. What CAN people use? Generally speaking, surfactants and pH adjusters, hot water, and sunlight: lower-impact ingredients. Additionally (and anecdotally again), many if not most cloth diapering households are at least semi-"crunchy" and want to reduce their environmental impact, and choose low-impact, natural products and methods accordingly.

Finally, and I know this is gross (but we ARE talking about diapers): these studies do not factor for washing of extra linens, children's clothes, and adults' laundry as a result of leaks and "poop blow-outs" -- which are extremely common with disposables and extremely uncommon in cloth diapers. (This tendency alone would convince us to use cloth diapers with our baby!) Diapers (and cloth wipes, etc.) constitute about three wash loads of diapers per week for most families and can reduce "emergency" laundry.

Pampers' "Myth" #3: Developing countries prove that cloth diapers are better than disposable diapers.
Pampers' "Fact": Our product provides key benefits in terms of skin health, dryness, and even sleep. In China, for example, we've learned that babies and parents are frequently awakened during the night each time the baby soaks the bed, because the baby has no diaper or a very thin piece of cloth. As a result, studies have shown that a disposable diaper can help a baby there get a better night's sleep. In another test, we have also seen less fecal contamination spread around the home using disposables versus cloth or nothing.

Clearly, we have a lot to learn about how to help with basic hygiene needs in countries that have very different access to clean water to wash with, and how to best dispose of products after use. We've also learned about hygiene for older children through our Always feminine care business – where in many parts of the world girls are forced to miss school one week each month during their period because they don't have enough pads or fresh water.

We are working in those regions to better understand what they do with products after use, and how to work with local agencies and other businesses to ensure the best long-term system to manage it.
In China, it is common to potty train children from birth with a practice known as "elimination communication" in the U.S. Infants there are using toilet facilities (obviously not unassisted nor reliably, yet) at ages as young as several weeks to several months of age. The entire process is different. Of COURSE a diapered infant will sleep better than one that awakens wet: that said, stay-dry cloth diapers seem to work well to promote sleep, just as disposables do.

As an anthropologist, I grit my teeth when I hear about hygienic "needs" in other cultures. Paternalistic! From a corporation, vulpine! As a skeptic of corporate propaganda, I twitch when I hear about their own "tests" (also, re: fecal contamination, see "blow-outs" above. Ugh!) Biased! Crazy! But it is the height of offense to claim to be finding "the best long-term system to manage" purely wasteful products forced upon other cultures who had their own means to cope with life's challenges, at the expense of cultural heritages, particularly when our own means to cope with diaper waste are so incredibly inadequate in the U.S. Sheesh!

Back to fecal contamination for a moment (I know, I'm sorry.) I read an article yesterday and cannot find it today, in which a researcher tested washing machines in the U.S. by washing a sterile washcloth in them and then measuring fecal bacteria. 1/4 of our washing machines have fecal bacteria; 1/5 of them spread e coli. The researcher's conclusion was that we take inadequate care with our laundry, particularly in terms of water temperature. So, let's not pick on China right now. Everybody go run an empty load of HOT water and a little bleach, right now. Better.

Pampers' "Myth" #4: Disposable diapers are harmful to the environment.
Pampers' "Fact": All of the component materials in Pampers diapers are gentle to consumers and safe for the environment. Pampers diapers are made of materials that are also frequently used in a wide range of other consumer products. We are committed to continuing to reduce our environmental impact. For example, Pampers has decreased its diaper weight by one-third and packaging weight by two-thirds. And innovative technologies, raw materials, and product design improvements have led to significant reductions in energy, water use, emissions, and waste at our plants. We are working so that our diapers in the future will have less impact on the environment than even today's diapers.

All respect to those parents who choose more responsible disposable or partially disposable diapers (gDiapers systems, diaper liners, unbleached paper diapers, etc.) Please understand that any figures I cite below are for the average American disposable diaper, not these more responsible choices. However, even these more responsible choices may have hidden environmental tolls.

Part of the problem is not the manufacturer's fault. Regardless of what kind of diaper is chosen, we are all supposed to scrape/rinse/dump the poop off of the diaper before proceeding to deal with it (through laundry or discarding). We are NOT supposed to discard waste directly into the trash and our landfills. However, virtually no disposable-diapering families actually do this. All cloth diapering families do. The reduction in raw sewage sent directly to our landfills is significant, even if other factors were not.

One child in disposables will use 20 trees and 420 gallons of petroleum, and generate 1 ton of landfill. These figures do not include transportation or manufacture. It takes 3/4 cup of petroleum to make a single disposable diaper. Even if we weren't talking about the ecological environment, disposable diapers would not be good for our geopolitical one.

The nutshell: Cloth diapers are reusable. Disposable diapers are single-use. I don't care how much you try to reduce your packaging, weight (and this is disingenuous: adding ingredients such as sodium polyacrylate are part of the process of making diapers lighter), and emissions -- reusable vs. single-use says it all.

Pampers' "Myth" #5: The materials that make up Pampers diapers are depleting our forests.
Pampers' "Fact": The pulp used in our diapers comes from well-managed forests in North America. In some cases, we source our pulp from scrap wood chips from lumber and saw mills. Our pulp suppliers are required to be certified by an independent third party as practicing sustainable forestry. Certification includes standards and criteria for replanting trees, protecting biodiversity, water, air and soil, and for obtaining broad stakeholder input into the forest management plan.

Doesn't sentence #1 of the "Fact" above confirm the hypothesis? "The pulp comes from forests." Yeah.

Am I not supposed to give a shit because they are in North America? We have rainforests on this continent, too. And other types of forests also matter to the species that inhabit them, to biodiversity, to our air quality, and to future generations.

Okay, on a less snarky note: this "Fact" is the reason I am writing about this issue today. Specifically, the phrase that triggered my political Tourette's is "In some cases."

HOW MANY CASES? I would like to know. Just saying.

Also, the last phrase: "for obtaining broad stakeholder input into the forest management plan." This one makes me see red. Think about stakeholders in management plans in other arenas of American life: do you know what effect the meat, milk, and sugar super-lobbies have had on our guardian committees and dietary guidelines? How about the gutting of organic standards due to Monsanto's (and other corporations') alumni personnel infesting the monitoring organizations and committees? This is setting the fox to guard the hen-house, and it is happening in all the parts of your life. Be watchful. Be wary. Don't believe that "third-party" means "objective."

But really, we're back to those first and second sentences. "We use wood from forests to make trash with only a single use. Sometimes we use wood with less impact (although it arguably creates impact to deplete it for this unnecessary use), but we won't tell you how often."

Okay. No more myths and facts. Back to your regularly scheduled program.

I encourage you to make up your own mind after careful research. And please be aware, I am not criticizing those of you who make the choice to use disposable diapers; I don't live your life, don't know what the right choice is for you, and would not presume to tell you how to choose. But I know what the right choice is for me. And I know when I'm being fed a line of horseshit from a brutal mega-corporation trying to distract people from another serious issue with a lively puppet show.

Cloth diapers are easy to use, but they're not easy to KNOW how to use. For instance, I've been washing my towels with fabric softener for decades. In the course of learning how softeners affect absorbency, I figured out why my towels were retaining scents and becoming less effective. I washed them without a couple times, and now -- boom! Big, fluffy, fresh, absorbent towels again! Like new! Try it! But that's the benefit, if there is one, of being unemployed and obsessed with learning about something new: I can research things endlessly and weed the sensible from the storytime. Not everyone has the luxury of that time, and there's a lot of misinformation out there.

If you want the benefit of my research, you know who to ask.

But don't just take my word for it: here are other posts at the Carnival:

Busily knitting

2010-05-14T09:39:00.001-07:00

And aren't these cute? These are wool soakers, which function as mostly-waterproof diaper covers.

Just had to show off. Please ignore the rumpled bedsheet beneath them.

Sardicado!

2010-05-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to eat more fish, for the health of the baby. Baby brains are built entirely of fats, and DHA is the best of those fats for that development. DHA is almost exclusively found in fish. Problems? I'm scared of methylmercury, PCBs, and un-sustainable fishing of declining species. Other problems? I'm from a family of fishophobes, for whom trout and tuna fish is about the limit. (Well, Mom likes halibut. But still.)

Enter the heroic sardine. Sadly, America's last canneries just closed their doors, but they are still available fresh and as imports. They are sustainable, not at all threatened, live low on the food chain (they eat plankton), and low in methylmercury and PCBs. So I bought a couple tins when I found them on sale. Then I cowered for three weeks while morning sickness made trying fishy new things inadvisable. I recalled that Grandma Red used to like sardines: I saw her mashing them with heavy cream, minced green apple, and red onion, and eating them on crackers once. I declined to taste, and she concurred, "you probably wouldn't care for them." Fish and apples? I thought not, too.

I put out requests to two favorite food bloggers to help me find recipes. This morning I got my first reply from Drew at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother (minus the fish & apples, maybe.) He pointed me toward an excellent website which provided numerous exciting preparation options and recipes, and a lot of reassurance regarding methylmercury levels in fish. So encouraging! So delicious looking!

Since as of yesterday I am feeling less queasy, I thought, sure, I'll make some fish for lunch.

But there weren't a lot of recipes for tinned sardines. But then I remembered that Alton Brown made a big deal about the sardine/avocado sandwiches he enjoyed so much during his weight loss, and I thought, yes, even though those look kinda fucking disgusting, I am going to forge ahead and try the Sardicado.

First of all, it is an UGLY sandwich... shades of grays and browns and shredlets of green on top of olive-drabby avocado and brown toast. Yikes. I didn't dare taste the fish mixture until it was safely ensconced on a layer of smashed avocado on my whole wheat toast. And then... and then...

Yes, they're fishy. But also smokey. With the native oiliness of the fish cut by key lime juice (didn't have lemon), zest, and black pepper, it put Pat and I in mind of chicharrones de pescado, a favorite Peruvian treat for us (deep fried fish cubes, dipped in fresh key lime juice with hot chilies sliced in). The avocado multiplied the smokiness and softened the flavors, adding just that oomph of umami.

Yum. Yummm.

And I no longer fear the sardine.

So the punchline is, now I want to try them Grandma's way. And lots of ways. They are neither slimy nor as fishy as I feared, and they have a delicious depth of flavor.

If you've known all this for years, feel free to laugh at me.

Superpowers

2010-05-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

So it seems that if we are doing good deeds, we become more powerful. If we are contemplating evil deeds, we become even more powerful. But don't worry, the good guys will win in the end.

You hear me, Micah? THE GOOD GUYS WILL WIN. ;)

Another food guide link for you

2010-05-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

Drew at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother has a wonderful article up today. If you're interested in food labeling and guides, this one will grab you.

Bitterness

2010-05-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

Bah. I went to school for years and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. And a Master's degree, which does not help me much in the job market. And ... that may actually be the dimensions of the con.

What would I advise my baby to do? Join the military? Maybe. Go to a vocational school, or shorter-term training for a profession? Hell yes. Grad school? Not right now. Ask me again in a few MORE years. Maybe after I've STARTED being able to repay my massive, crushing student loan debt.

Group guest post at Perfume Smellin' Things - top 10 of Spring and a gift drawing

2010-05-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

Go see. If you're quick enough, and leave a comment, you may win 10 samples of springtimey fragrances from Marina's collection.

A few of my favorite things

2010-05-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, good stuff comin' your way.

Today our good friends at Don Gusano games announced the official release of their new game, Quack in the Box. We play-tested and adored this game back when it was a stack of hand-cut, typed or handwritten cards. I cannot recommend it enough: I think it's more fun than Chez Geek or Munchkin (which I happen to think are a lot of fun too).

I promised April this link to the Food Politics blog, but I think that others who read this blog might like it too. Marion Nestle is a guru of sorts for me, politically and as an intellectual. She's a trenchant researcher of the processes that determine labeling, nutritional guidelines, and institutional feeding (e.g. of children) in our country and elsewhere.

Also, I promised the Organic Consumers Association that I would pass along a shout-out. They're one of my favorite causes, as they stand opposed to the relatively more evil forces acting upon our food chain. With Monsanto and other industrial agricultural complexes mounting $50,000,000+ campaigns to place their people in key positions in our government (and that does not include the lobbying already in place) with intent to undermine the standards separating natural farming from agro-industrial practices, "the resistance" is one of the best causes out there.

Speaking of good food, particularly food like our grandparents used to eat, I have to mention Drew's wonderful blog, How To Cook Like Your Grandmother. He is funny, his recipes are both well-tested and delicious, and (as I happened to win a drawing for his review copy of Nina Planck's interesting and liberating book Real Food For Mother and Baby, which got here yesterday and has been in my hand almost constantly since) I feel so connected to him today. (Ms. Planck sent another copy directly, which arrived this morning; stay tuned, as either Drew or I will have to have a drawing to pay it forward.)

If you find that any of these things resonate with you, please do pass them along.

Love you folks.

Art car

2010-04-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

This is totally awesome. Thanks again to Pathy for the link to That Will Buff Out.

Stir crazy and on house arrest

2010-04-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

So Friday night we had a scare. I called the doctor's office and got the doctor on call (not my usual doc), who told me I was probably fine and to settle down, and told me also to take it easy, keep down with my feet up, and not do any heavy lifting. He told me to call my doctor Monday morning.

I called my doctor on Monday morning. He told me to take it easy, keep down with my feet up, not do any heavy lifting or housework, and call him Wednesday morning.

So I called first thing this morning, and haven't had a call back yet. I think that the baby and I are okay -- although I'd rather he had brought me in to confirm that -- because symptoms fell off rapidly and were gone by Sunday, and I feel... well, um, pregnancy-great, which means "pretty gross" to the rest of you. Sore boobs, nausea, sleepiness. When that's the stuff that reassures you, you can understand that the brain gets a little crazy.

And I'm still waiting to find out if AIM approves me. It ought to, but damn, it needs to get on with it. Yesterday I should have received notification; they are supposed to respond within 10 days of getting the application. But maybe they don't check their P.O. Box every day. I'm giving them until tomorrow before I start making phone calls. Maybe.

I am also trying to knit a wool soaker. Do you have any idea how tiny these things are? The waistband is like a wrist-band. So. Tiny.

Brutal and brilliant

2010-04-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Mark Dery rips Lady GaGa a new one. Brilliantly.

Political blog I like

2010-04-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Have I shared No More Mister Nice Blog with you yet?

Every day it gives me at least one belly laugh (often rueful) and at least one thing to get active about. I like it lots.

Infomercial World

2010-04-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Serious Eats found a couple funny videos, in which the incompetence featured in infomercials (the part where the screen is grayed out and everybody turns butterfingers) are showcased. Enjoy.

Bad form, WellPoint (and the rest of these companies)

2010-04-22T10:29:00.001-07:00

We lost my mother-in-law Carol to breast cancer. My beloved cat Pepe was a breast cancer survivor for 8 years of her kitty life (it recurs in cats; she had 6 mastectomies but handled them with hardy grace). I have many friends who are survivors. I've had two scares -- one a little blood clot, probably from a bruise, and the other mastitis from the hormones brought on by a miscarriage -- and I am religiously scrupulous about getting checked, eating my fruits and vegetables, and not smoking.

Breast cancer is so common and so dreadful that we try to donate a bit each year to research to fight it. It's so horrifying that WellPoint cancels policies for its policyholders who are diagnosed with breast cancer. And that is, of course, outside the horror I feel that they are betraying not only their contracts but the trust of their clients.

Booooo.

Now THAT'S vanity publishing

2010-04-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

OMG. OMG. [link may be NSFW; certainly is NSFHumans]

I kyped the link from a Regretsy commentator. You know, just so you know I'm not actually searching for this kinda thing.

Do you use your slow cooker a lot?

2010-04-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

This article at Cook Like Your Grandmother was really eye-opening. The most interesting thing for me is the way manufacturers have been cranking up the temperature on slow cookers over time; I noticed my new ones have been hella hotter than my old ones were, but had figured this for a flaw in cheap machinery, not a design decision.

Japanese Curry, from scratch

2010-04-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Make this.

Japanese Curry, from scratch
makes 4 very generous servings or 6 for people with lots of restraint

2 tablespoons butter
1 onion, sliced thinly
2 teaspoons fresh garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
1 or 2 small Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced or diced as desired
2 or 3 carrots, sliced or diced as desired
1/2 large granny smith apple, diced (or 1 whole small apple of whatever type)
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon garam masala (and if you don't have this in your kitchen, you need some)
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups broth or bouillon in water
-salt to taste (go light - I needed 1/2 teaspoon and used low-sodium broth)
-brown sugar to taste (if needed - up to 1 teaspoon)
-small squeezes of any of the following (which I totally didn't need) to bring up tartness, complexity, and the love level: ketchup, tonnkatsu sauce, or Worcestershire sauce
-a sprinkle of cayenne or other hot pepper

You will also need rice and your favorite crunchy-crusted cutlets for serving (might I recommend either Chik Patties by Morningstar Farms or the delicious Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon, if you don't want to fry chicken or pork cutlets?)

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a medium saucepan. Add onions and stir-fry until onions are richly browned. The browner the better. (Burneder is not better.) Add ginger and garlic and stir-fry until fragrant. Add 2 1/2 cups of broth and bring to a boil. Then add potatoes, apple, and carrot, and allow to simmer until vegetables are very soft.

If you prefer your curry uniformly thick and saucy, you may puree the veggies. If you like it with recognizable veggies, leave them alone. I split the difference and just sort of drive-by'd them with a potato masher, which made an unattractive but delicious curry. Next time I'll puree, and the time after that, I will probably leave them whole. :) What I'm saying here is whatever suits you is fine.

In a skillet, melt the other tablespoon of butter and add the flour to make a roux. Cook and stir until flour loses raw smell, but don't brown. Add the curry powder.

Options for finishing: 1) If you did NOT puree the veggies, dip some of the broth out of them into the skillet with the roux and blend with a whisk; once you have a thick gravy in the roux skillet, add the roux mixture and garam masala to the vegetable mixture and stir. Add peas and let them defrost. Then serve a couple ladle-fulls of this on rice and cutlets.

2) If you DID puree the veggies, you will find that the broth in them is too thick to dip into the roux. That's okay. Add another 1/2 to 1 cup of broth to the roux, and blend with a whisk; once you have a thick gravy in the roux skillet, add the roux mixture and garam masala to the vegetable mixture and stir. Add peas and let them defrost. Then serve a couple ladle-fulls of this on rice and cutlets.

Optionally to the whole cutlet plan (although I scoff at your cutlet-rejection), you can add 1/2 to 1 pound of boneless chicken to the browned onions, and go from there. You won't be able to puree this option without it being gross, though. And you will miss out on the cutlets.

Do this.

I don't want to give the Colonel press...

2010-04-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

...and haven't eaten at his death factory in decades. However, the new too-gross-to-be-true sammich without buns is getting a lot of (horrified) press online, and -- with complete revulsion -- I find it giddily hilarious (in that This Is Why You're Fat way. Think of it as Failblog for your arteries.)

Although it only begins to address my problems with the original and is in no way a comprehensive retrofit, I find this Vegansaurus overhaul delightful. And still hilarious.

And less churlishly...

2010-04-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Flight of the Conchords making with the silly.

The conversation in the park is the best.

Wonderful churlishness

2010-04-19T12:09:00.001-07:00

I love this thread and its fictional letter to the non-pregnant people in a pregnant couple's life. It's making the rounds at BabyCenter even among those of us not due in August.

Having been threatened with a long visit (i.e. the visits to another relative have been measured in MONTHS, not days) at the child's birth, while I was all of five weeks pregnant, I feel especially sensitive about the invitation issue. I'm not such a private person that I am mourning lost privacy, and nobody's been lunging to touch the belly yet, or anything like that.

What do I do about that visitation threat? Lie about my due date? Tell them I've moved to New Zealand and I don't know my new address yet? Threaten to kill them if they do it? Simply not allow them in when they are not wanted (which, hinty hint, will be most of the time for about three weeks of sleepless bonding time)? Ack!

Pregnancy

2010-04-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to show.

I'm starting to feel really queasy.

I'm starting to have cravings.

Awesome.

The best thing: when I went into my mom's office to make copies (of my AIM application, in fact), she was looking at an online week-by-week pregnancy guide. She turned around to me and announced that this week my baby is growing fingerprints, and they are unique. I responded that the baby is also working on eye pigmentation. We both grinned like idiots.

Life's good; I just see less of it, since I'm sleepin' a lot.

Sesame Miso dip for artichokes, crudites, or whatever

2010-04-13T13:11:00.001-07:00

I normally serve artichokes either 1) with melted butter (which is how I grew up with them, but Pat doesn't love butter all that much), or 2) with mayonnaise mixed with grated ginger and soy sauce to taste -- which is incredibly delicious enough to be popular with Pat even though he loathes mayo in its native form. However, I needed more protein in my day today, so I made a kind of half-assed tofu mayonnaise (i.e. I didn't make tofu mayo separately and then flavor it, I just chucked everything into the jar all at one time) with the same flavor profile. My, my! So delicious!

Sesame Miso Tofu Dip

1 sterile-pak of silken soft tofu
1/4 cup canola oil (maybe -- I eyeballed it, but go light. You can add if you want.)
juice of 1 key lime (or regular lime would do)
1 tablespoon or so of rice wine vinegar
1 very rounded tablespoon sweet white miso (this is my most favorite thing)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons ginger, minced
3 tablespoons or more of soy sauce
sprinkle of salt, just to bring up the level if needed
black sesame seeds, for sprinkling (you could omit them, but you'd miss them subconsciously)

Blend until smooth (I used my handheld thing). Sprinkle with black sesame seeds and serve as a thinnish dip for artichoke leaves, raw vegetables, or whatever your little heart desires. Would be (and the leftovers WILL be) dynamite as a pasta salad dressing.

For the iNkies ... and all of you

2010-04-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, check out these glorious images of sleeping insects covered in dew. Wow.

Interesting Slate article: "It's okay for vegans to eat oysters"

2010-04-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

I just thought this article was interesting.

I am by no means living the ultra-ethical environmentalist lifestyle that I would ideally live, but I agree in principle with most of this unusual article. Why am I not? Well, the exigencies of the moment are always something we define for ourselves, and I have made hard decisions to suspend my harshest judgment in favor of what I feel is my best judgment. I know some of you get varying mileage, here, and I respect any well-considered lifestyle -- whatever your reasons.

Pasta!

2010-04-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

I love me some pasta, but Scordo's challenge project to eat every known type of pasta (within a year and a half) is a little bit crazy... albeit in a wonderful way. It's got me thinking about similar, delightful food challenges. Wouldn't it be fun to try, say, 52 soups in a year? Or 52 baked good recipes? (Or hell, lots of pasta, why not?) What can one do to broaden one's culinary horizons in a year or so, if one is really trying?

So I am going to push back against the sameness that creeps up on the omnivorous American quotidian diet. (When we were vegetarian, our cuisine tended to be far more experimental... and I know we can do it again!) I just don't know the dimensions of the project, yet. Any thoughts?

For the moment, it might have to be a brussels sprouts or cottage cheese challenge, since I have a vigorously developing passenger that seems to be a nutrition freak. I am fortunate that all of my cravings (except the odd pickle, olive, or lemon wedge -- I am into the sour/salty things! -- and one stray, mad passion for waffles) are for healthy foods: rye bread, spinach stems, carrots, red bell peppers.

Here's the critter:

(Yesterday the critter measured 7 weeks 1 day.)

We got to watch the heartbeat fluttering on the ultrasound monitor, and Pat got to watch me submit to medical indignities extensive enough to embarrass him. I will remember the joy we felt at seeing that heartbeat, and our tight hug afterward, me still hospital-gowned and ooky from the sensor goo, for the rest of my life.

Boners. Tea hee!

2010-04-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Via Warren Ellis, a collection of Tea Party signs featuring boners of grammar or spelling (or both!) rivaling G.W.B.'s malapropisms. These are amusingly being called "Teabonics."

In related news, my stepmom dropped several during her visit; although she certainly has her fair share of wingnuttery in her head, she was talking about innocuous things at the time. My favorite was when she described how a little tweak to a cooking recipe made the results "excrementally" better. (My brother made a click like a bomb about to explode, then refused to meet my eyes. Pat elbowed me furiously -- I thought because he thought I was very naughty for seeking Rob's gaze, but I discovered later that it was because he wanted to know if I'd heard it.)

I'm gonna say it: the original Tea Party was full of shit, too. (Mind that my source isn't exactly official, but #5 and #2 here sum it up nicely, if somewhat controversially.) But the current movement is not populated by our intellectual cutting edge. And that's all I need to say.

Today would have been my Grandma Red's birthday. She taught me how to embroider, bake, and drive, and was one of the darlings of my life. Her wise and temperate advice about marriage, I think, is the principal reason our marriage has flourished so well; she gave me a realistic and ambitious approach to relationships that contributes to my every day happiness and joy. She loved Cecile Brunner roses, lemon cucumbers, and birds. She also had a wicked sense of humor and she and my mother were locked for her entire life in a death-spiral of terrifying April Fools' pranks which I did my best to dodge lively. The last time we spent her birthday together, we frosted a cake with wasabi for her. Damned if she didn't eat her whole slice, saying, "There's some spice in this -- it's good!" while we all slowly choked down our own, wondering when, God, WHEN could we quit eating it?

Love you, Grandma.

Honey Fig Muffins

2010-03-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure where I lifted the original recipe from, but I modified it a bit.

Please note that these are better eaten relatively soon after cooking, as they are dry-ish muffins with low oil content. They will dry out mercilessly if left uncovered. They might dry mercilessly even if covered, as the fruit absorbs the moisture from the surrounding matrix. Dunno. Eat 'em quick.

Honey Fig Muffins

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
scant 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (adds a lot, but strength of aroma increases with keeping)

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup butter, melted (you could double this and they'd keep slightly better)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups chopped dried figs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a regular-sized muffin tin with 12 paper muffin cups.

Mix dry ingredients together, whisking well. If your baking powder has clumped as has mine, curse and break clumps with fingers. Whisk again.

Melt butter and add honey and milk to it in that order, stirring well. Add egg to this wet mixture with vanilla and whisk. Mix into dry ingredients. You may want a silicone spatula for this -- your whisk will not go through the thick batter.

Stir in fruit and nuts, and turn dollops of dough-like batter into the muffin cups.

Bake for 20 minutes. Makes 12 deliciously wholesome-tasting, iron-and-fiber-rich muffins.

Galactic Empire State of Mind

2010-03-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

This link was stolen straight from Greg. I'm not sorry.

The costumed dancers make it all so perfect.

Eeeeeeeeediots

2010-03-29T16:10:00.001-07:00

Can you believe this shit? (We've been talking about it for days, but link is once again lifted from Bill.)

In related news, relatives are staying in town and I am exhausted. I don't want to have to entertain, as I would prefer to take good care of myself -- healthy food, exercise, and the sleep I need -- instead. (As opposed to "as much as possible, on top of entertaining." Which isn't helped at all by snarky fam-isms like "you are barely pregnant -- you're gonna feel an awful lot sicker when it really gets started." Excuse me? Morning sickness happens EARLY.) And I am tired of wearing my bra, since I put on 2 cup sizes in 2 weeks. My hastily-ordered replacements haven't arrived and I am really getting tired of wearing my tight ones for hours and hours a day because I am amongst people who make comments about my body.

I am tired of putting up with: hatespeech; insane beliefs about the apocalypse being, like, tomorrow; denigrating my church; interrupting any comment I make that I saw a cool animal with stories about killing said animal; racist and other patently insane remarks; busybodyism (which wouldn't be so annoying except for...); knowitallism (with a healthy dose of THEY REALLY DON'T); and general inability to be courteous enough to inform people your plans. Grr.

Enough bitching from me, already.

Scrubbles is singing and bathing outside, I have honey fig muffins in the oven, and the new life in me has already begun development of every vital organ, and is starting on eyelids and tongue. Wow! Have you ever really thought about how fast babies develop in utero? It's fast -- crazy fast. My little spark of life is already starting to resemble a human; only a very few short weeks ago, it was only two cells who hadn't met.

An afternoon saturated with awesomeness

2010-03-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

Out of focus but still kinda cute:

First, this alphabet of awesomeness by Neill Cameron, link stolen from Bill, who is also awesome.

Second, there was a lizard in my computer room. My carpet is less than fastidiously vacuumed, in this room in particular but everywhere right now, and since I knit and spin, there are little knots of fiber everywhere. I dodged stepping on one while racing for the phone, thinking, "that knot looks hella like a lizard!"

It was a teeny lizard. I caught him in a drinking glass (still had to touch him with my phobic, phobic fingers, though). He pooped in the glass and held very still. I took his picture. Then I put him outside near our mini-woodpile where there is shade and bugs. I realized that he looked shocky and listless, and might be thirsty after his Adventures in Shag Carpeting, and I sprinkled droplets of water all around him. He moved only enough to start lapping at the closest one, so I poured water plentifully near him. He ran to the edge and got a good long drinky. I feel good about myself. And he feels better than he would have on a warm, dehydrated afternoon -- particularly squished by my giant feet or slowly shriveling away in unvacuumed carpet.

So, awesome.

Breathtaking

2010-03-24T14:35:00.001-07:00

This virtual choir is wonderful. Sit back and enjoy.

Perspective: big food companies, not evil?

2010-03-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

The world is a-changing. For instance, in recent days, I have discovered that Wal-Mart is surprisingly green (they came to it late but with a fervor and the power of their commercial empire.)

Here's another article offering refreshing perspective on food corporations. Go read it, it's great.

Now, mind you... food LOBBIES are still pure, pure evil. They are about money, brainwashing, and turning tax dollars into obesity. Make no mistake. But the article linked above may make you feel more empowered and cheerful about the companies themselves.