Melsville

Of Course You Know, This Means War.

Okay, okay, I only just posted a piece I'd written yesterday about frozen mac-and-cheese and canned deviled ham and how much Liam and I had pined for such salty gems.   I am actually very glad that I did because it has lead me to challenge myself.  Starting tomorrow, I am barring over-processed food from my larder and my freezer. Get thee behind me, oh foul ingredients! 

I realize this is going to taking some doing, and some fudging here and there.  I would like to see how long I can make this ban last.  Wish me luck.

Now, does anyone have a good recipe for baked mac-and-cheese?  How about deviled ham?  No kidding, I'd really like to know.

"NOT THE PEANUT BUTTER!!"

After running a fever around 102 all day yesterday, Liam’s doctor told me I had to keep him home today.  No fever today; we check it every few hours, more for a laugh than anything else.  Liam and I need our laughs today.  Since he’s home, he’ll be catching up on the studying he didn’t do over the break, preparing for the social studies test he should be taking today, and starting his book project; due Friday.

At noon, Liam was still under a grubby sleeping bag on our couch wearing his boxer shorts.   He only got dressed after I told him that there would be no mac-and-cheese until he put on some clothes.  My son is a fool for mac-and-cheese, but only one brand will do.  Although I now find the idea of eating it totally, truly revolting,  I devoured it when I was pregnant with , or nursing, Liam, and this might explain his devotion to it.   Today, Liam got a nasty shock: we had not one single box of Amy’s Mac-an-cheese.  Not one  and I did check the freezer thoroughly. 

At last, we moved on to our second choice, baloney on a hamburger roll.  Here, faced another disappointment, no hamburger rolls.  Now, baloney holds no appeal for me, it never did.  Today, as I peeled the pink rounds apart and placed them on wheat bread, the memory swept in.

Twenty -something years ago, my mother let me stay home one day when I was only half sick,,  half overwhelmed by the term paper, due that day.  It wasn’t that I hadn’t been working, I’d been overworking . My paper on the trial of Oscar Wilde was twice as long as it had to be, carefully researched and painstakingly annotated.  Around noon, when the end was in sight,  my mother came upstairs and left lunch on my desk. grapes , seltzer and a sandwich of Underwood Deviled Ham on crustless toast.  Since I’d never eaten hummus, deviled ham was the only spread that I could stand.  Salty, meaty, deviled, I never looked at the listed ingredients, and didn’t care that it was meat in a can.  I just loved deviled ham sandwiches.

Today, I wanted Underwood Deviled Ham so badly that I  would have left the house and hunted for a can.  I would have done ir too,  if Liam hadn’t been there, wanting his lunch.

This once, I gave Liam a break when he said that the wheat bread, though perfect for peanut butter, would not do for baloney.  P.B and J. was our only choice.   Resignedly, I took the  jars from the fridge.  Only when I opened the jar did I see that we were down to only the barest scrapings of peanut butter.  All I could do was laugh and tell Liam it was a good thing we had the jelly.  “Oh no!!” he shouted as he watched me scrape the peanut butter out of the tracks left by other knives.  “NOT THE PEANUT BUTTER!!”  Too much!! Even though I knew that there must have been a second jar in the cabinet, I called Jamie and asked him.  I also gave him a list of groceries we wanted him to pick up on his way home:  Amy’s mac-and-cheese,  hamburger buns,  and Underwood Deviled Ham.  The craving might have died before the morrow, but I’d like to have a can of it in the house.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no fooling hunger.

Plastic Red-Haired Girl

Collecting seems to be a natural boy-thing, even, and perhaps especially in grown men. It has to do with the love of  numbers that plagues so many; the baseball statistic, the point-spread, the lists of sexual partners. Put a number on it, and a man  knows  just what he's  got; and so does everyone else.

To me, the scenes in "The 40 Year-Old Virgin"  when the audience sees the title-character's collection of unopened action figures; his pride and joy, the boxed-up toys he started amassing as a child, is as sad as funny.   He kept them perfect on the shelf while all the other kids tried to make their toys fly, left them overnight in the huts built of twigs and got them scratched and dirty.  The life of a toy is not for the faint of heart; or it shouldn't be. 

There will always be "Star Wars"  figures being made.  There will always be six-year-olds watching "Star Wars"  for the first time and playing out the movie almost as soon as they've seen it.  The market for
Wookies and Darth Vaders will never run dry.   Young kids don't care about the box or the number on the back of the neck,  young kids want to play.  The first time I bought my son action figures (Vader and Han Solo, I think), I announced that I had no use for a collecters item  and that I was buying a plaything. The charming gent who owned the comics-and-paraphanalia store smiled, and pointed me to the bargan bin.  Those toys, in their world-weary packaging cost me $5.00, and made Liam a superstar man-in-the-know with his friends.

Some weeks ago, I feared I  was witnessing the begining of the end.  Liam discovered Ebay, and found there a wealth of Star Wars Lego people for sale.  Here, he found a rare Qui Gon Gin  ( that looks nothing like Liam Neison)  offered for $6.00.   While I protested that $6.00 was an awful lot to pay for something that was an accsessory to a toy. we'd promised him Star Wars Lego people ( I imagined that such things came in packs of three, which might cost $6.00), he bought it.  Since then, Liam has checked Ebay and spent his money on a Darth Moll and a very tricked-out Ewok. 

While Liam was keeping an eye on his latest treasure, I typed in the description "Auburn Sindy 1970", just to see what I could find.  And, there she was, the perfect twin of the only fashion doll I ever owned; Sindy with her long, red hair. Not as skinny as Barbie, nor as tall,  with  B-cup breasts that were more pert  than pointy, she was a hip British young one whom my hip British mother found trustworthy.  Offered naked, Sindy as I found her on Ebay lacked her Mary Quant-esque miniskirt, her go-go boots turtleneck and skipants, but I remembered how cool she was.  British Invasion cool, but Americans never really dug her .

This Sindy didn't have a cute home-haircut, and this left her in what the Ebay merchent labeled "Excellant Condition".  But, had she been played with?  Because she was being bid for in pounds sterling, I assumed she'd been played with, and that she would go to home that "got" her.

I watched that doll for three days. When the price was somewhere between $ 7.00 and $ 20.00, I wondered if I should take a chance.  Overnight on the third day, the price jumped to  $ 123.00.  On the last day, the price was $ 184.00  In the last fifteen minutes, someone bid $ 202.  And then, she was gone.

The only collection I ever had was my doll collection.  Mostly Madame Alexander dolls given for Christmas and birthdays, I threw out the blue boxes and removed the wrist-tags.  Our's was pretty much a Barbie-free neighborhood, but this only meant we played with our Madame Alexander "Little Women" dolls, on-and-offing their clothes and leaving them on the floor.  I'm not sure how much they are worth, but I'm wondering if I take them out of the basement and sell them.  I know I should, they're just boxed up in the basement.  I also know I'll miss them.

On Ebay, I found an only slightly less perfect red-haired Sindy.  I do want her back, she can live on my desk.  I'll bid ten pounds and see how long that keeps me on top.  Welcome home, my red haired dream girl.

More Names

My daughter's name is Emma; it's a name I've always loved.  Only when I started sharing my favorite picture-book, "The Fourteen Bears in Summer and Winter" with her did I realize that my love of the name may have started with this book and little Emma Bear.   She, Emma Bear, a tiny strawberry-blond cub in a winning flowered sunhat, was the cutest one of all.   When we read the book, my little girl searches the pages and crows, "It's me! It's Emma Bear."

At Preschool, they call my Emma "Emma O." because there's also an "Emma M." in the class.  Emma is a very popular name these days, and I don't think it has much to do with "The Fourteen Bears".  My son, Liam already knows three other little boys with his name.  When I named my children, I didn't imagine their names were trendy.  They just sounded like fine, upstanding names for individuals I want to know.

Two days after Christmas,  I found myself in a mall Lego store filled with children exchanging kits they already owned for new ones and spending fist-fulls of holiday money.  Surrounded bu nine-year-old boys,  I was tempted to call out my son's name to see how many would look up and wondered who had called them.  Felix, Isabella, Miles, when did these become such common names?

In High School, I knew a young named Duff Johnson.  "Duff", the name landed heavily on the ears, no subtilties here.  No-one imagined there could be another Duff Johnson.  Well, guess what; I typed the name into the Facebook window, and I found at least four (and some were women).  What, I wondered, would happen if I typed in the full name?; Duff Guy Horscio Pomersnce Johnson.  THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

Names

My friends, remember your college days.  Imagine that you walked into any co-ed dorm and asked,  "Where's David?" 

What would happen?  Chances are that at least one young man would step forward saying, "I'm here!"  If this wasn't your David, you'd be peppered with questions;

    Did you mean David Smith or David Jones?
    Was this the David, Mike's roommate, or Jenny's boyfriend, David?
    The tall David?  David who played rugby?  Dave the  theater-guy?

Everyone my age knows four or five Davids.  By now, most of them have lost such nicknames as Cute-Boy David, or Gym-Dude Dave.  The easiest thing is to use his last name ( David Rodger). or tying-in his wife's name ( Diane-and-David David).  To my son, David is the name of someone's father, never a kid's name.  I've told him that there were at least two boys in ny High-School class. He doesn't know any children named Jennifer or Krisren.  When I tell him that I knew many kids named girls and that half of them were girls, he can't beleive it.

Call It What it Is.

Now, I have always thought that George Carlin was funny, and usually right.  A few nights ago, I saw an old bit of his playing as part of a PBS show.  Although it was "bleeped", in the way that his stuff has to be when it is half-shown on television, he still seemed like odd PBS fare.  Perhaps he always should.

In the old-looking clip, George Carlin was talking about what used to be called "Shell-Shock", and how its name has changed.  During World Was I, doctors and soldiers owned up to the fact that some of the men who lived in wet ditches,  had there legs shot out from under them and watched other men bleed and die screaming just aren't the same when they get packed up and sent home.  In World War II, they called it "Battle Fatigue," which made it sound like all the injured men would need would be a long sleep in their own beds.  Sounded like they'd just had a tough day at the war.  To me, "battle fatigue" seemed like the name doctors would give it in the 1950s, when some veterans admitted to it,  It's a vague term, like something that will end. 

During the wars in Korea and Vietnam they called it something, but I can't remember what it was; something as remote as "police action" or whatever they called the wars that caused it. Whatever they called it, people in the Middle East and Northern Ireland suffered it too.  Still a side-effect, something that ends.

It doesn't end, just ask me.  By the time the car smacked into me and I rolled into a wet ditch, doctors had named  it  "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" and recorded it in the diagnostic tool  psychiatrists use as a cheat sheet.  It is a heavy name, something clinical, something that won't be denied.  The shorthand for it is P. S. T. D.  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.  Sharp and to the point.  RAT-A-TAT-TAT.  That's what I have.

Naming it P.T.S.D. takes it off the battlefield and admits it happens to women, kids, and other civilians.

For a while, I said I had Shell Shock. Once you've had your first flashback, you're living in a mine-field.   At any time, something could blow you backwards into Hell.  Or, you could cross safely, you just never know.  You start being careful, very careful, cagy, wound very tightly.  No matter how careful you are, something could up and blow at any moment.  You can make it to the other side.

About a year after the accident, a doctor put me on Prozac, a new drug, practically still warm.  It was so new that the doctors didn't know that it gave head-injury patiants like me seizures.  After I was yanked off Prozac, it took almost a year before the flashbacks started.  I just needed to ride them out and know they would end.

Ride them out: it's been a eleven years since the last wave of flasbacks. I have no idea what I'll do if they start hitting the shore.   I'll find some way to keep myself tethered, I always do.

Today's Wish for Liam

At this moment, 10:30 am  Wednesday, February 4, 2009,  my wish for my son is that he stay an artist.  Yesterday,  after I had lead my reading-group in his classroom, Liam withdrew a piece from his locker, and asked that I carry it home.  A big multicolored triangle, woven on a paper plate and glued to a large sheet of paper and fashioned into a comet with black and red comets around it. LOVED IT!!   All the kids are weaving these days, or knitting, but nobody weaves like Liam.

These days, Liam creates within school projects;  within the next week and a half, he'll be creating a diorama representing a scene from "The Cay", the book our group has been reading.  He'll be bringing out the Sculpi; he loves his Sculpi.   Liam's puzzle, how to create a hurricane that fits into a shoebox.  I want to see him take on challenge.

He wants to learn to draw amine.  He wants to make his dragons perfectly. I hope he learns to trust his own perfect.  That he gives himself to it, follows it.    Liam also wants to earn a 10th degree Black Belt, and I love that too.

I hope Liam makes his life from things that he loves.  Loves takes dedication.  He may not be feel up to dedication every day, but I hope he can take it on.

This is Not a Cooking Blog

I love to read the blogs of my foodie friends.  Not only do I enjoy the tales of the making sour dough bread or headcheese or of the quest for an authentic hagas, I also enjoy knowing that everybody has to make a quick lunch or look into the fridge and pull together something his child will eat. 

Maybe if I put aside the time to read more cookbooks I would have more imaginative ideas of my own, or more lofty goals.  But, I don't.  One of the things that I choose to do rather than read cookbooks is to haul my butt back to Davis Square Martial Arts two hours after slogging home with Liam from his class at  the selfsame basement studio.  Two nights a week, I choose to practice Kung Fu when others might watch cooking programs or find recipes.  Monday and Wednesday evenings, my goal is a hot meal;  a simple hot meal that two children and Jamie, who tries to be a vegetarian but views many vegitables suspiciously, are going to eat.  Enter pancakes and bacon.  Jamie likes whisking together  a batch of Aunt Jemima's , and frying up bacon, ham or sausage patties has made me look like a culinary genius to any child who has joined us for Pancake Night.  Pancakes are also a good excuse to substtute berries, pineapple or sautated apples (when I feel fancy) for vegetables; another thing that keeps it popular.  So what if I dash into my classes smelling hickory-smoked?; that's one meal we didn't have order.

This week, I have another kitchen goal; this week I will stay two steps ahead of Angelina's Pizza.  On Tuesday, we'll go to  dinner (probably Chinese) with A.T., but all other nights, I'm cooking.  Nothing fancy, there is going to be pasta, and leftovers will be used.   Cooking blogs have confirmed this for me, leftovers can do great things.  So can pancakes and bacon, my friends, do not neglect the power of pancakes and bacon.