Borne up from the Blahs by a Good Book

I tried to come up with a synonym for good starting with b to preserve the alliteration (I almost typed illiteration and didn't notice, things are really really bad) but all I could come up with was Beautiful or Blessed or Beneficent and that's NOT what I mean.

I've been a little wobbly lately. I almost said 'flat' but that's not really it. I'm quite happy a lot of the time. I'm managing alright when Matt's away, I'm decluttering small areas of the house in fits and starts, I'm walking a lot, I have a little more free time and the kids are great.

Right, actually, everything's fine, never mind.

So what's my problem? Hell if I know. Partly Eve starting grade one which means both kids in school under 2:45 which is a pretty drastic alteration of the routine. Mostly this is great -- more free time. Although when you factor in that I'm still in the school library one day a week, volunteer in the classroom, theoretically should still take time to eat, and have a very short attention span, it doesn't seem to be enough free time to justify the pressure that I feel to have something to show for that free time. If you know what I mean. Yeah, me neither.

Partly I just have trouble with new routines. It's only been... what... about ten weeks. I should be hitting my stride around the time they graduate.

Anyway, part of the slide towards depression/anxiety for me always affects my reading. It's not that I do less of it. Frequently I do more of it, but it becomes more of a compulsion and an escape (the huddled, miserable, guilty kind, rather than the enjoyable, playing-hooky kind). And when I start to feel like reading isn't wonderful, I get really scared.

Lately, what I've been trying when reading feels stale is going to Young Adult Literature, for a change-up, a refreshing pause, a sort of mental palate-cleanser. I was thinking that, based on the books I've read lately, YA has come a long way from when I was a Y.A., but then I remember reading Madeleine L'Engle and Roald Dahl and George Selden, so maybe it hasn't but there's more of it.

Anyway, I highly recommend John Green. One of my friends put a link to his blog on Facebook and it was hilariously twisted and twistedly hilarious. I put a few of his books on my request list for the library, but I deactivated them because I had way too many books to read, I just wanted to have them in the queue so I wouldn't forget about them. Wow, queue looks funny when you type it. Did I type it wrong? So somehow there was a glitch in the system and I got all three of them at once. I decided to try to lever myself out of the literary doldrums with Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines.

It's hard to tell, sometimes, if the book you're reading is really as flat-out kick-ass fantastic as it seems or if you're just reading it at the precisely perfect time so that it just appears that way. I marathoned both books in a day and a half, and they were the perfect antidote -- not to the other books, necessarily, just to my mood. They really captured the desperate, tormented hopefulness of adolescence, the friends who know you better than you know yourself, the transports of success and the abject despair of failure -- all with slightly wittier banter than I ever exchanged with my particular high school friends. There are some really insightful musings along the way, too. I guess maybe it was good to get out of the problems of my stage of life and remember that no stage is without its own attendant torments. And that, no matter what, you really need your friends, even if it's just to tell you that you're being a huge jackass.

Food and Wine and Cheating at Pictionary -- What's not to like?

We had our third potluck dinner party with four other couples last night. It was our turn to host, which is fine, because when you host you don't do the main course. This means you don't always get to cook with your own stuff in your own kitchen, but it also means (at least in my case) that you don't have to bust your ass cleaning and hiding piles of crap one floor up or down AND cook a main course at the same time.

I think it was my friend Janet's idea, and it was a really good one. The idea is to cook something fairly sophisticated that you've never cooked before, and we all take turns doing each course. It's a fun cooking experience, and a great night with friends, and since it's November and the last few weeks have been travel-intensive for Matt and single-parenting intensive for me I was really really looking forward to it. Not to mention this is the cleanest and clearest my counters have been in months, if not years. In all the pictures of people in the kitchen I just keep looking adoringly at my counters.

Within the first ten minutes, I learned that this was not the greatest group to use the word "fallacious" with.
This was our table. These are our friends. I took out the faces because I wasn't sure if they'd want to be on my blog, although some of them will have to if they're in pictures with me and I look good. My principles only extend so far.


This is Collette's fabulous duck prosciutto and avocado salad. She drove to Plantaganet to get the duck. While we were eating she said to her husband "oh, by the way, there are duck breasts in the freezer that you are not allowed to touch." He said "you know, if you hadn't told me, it wouldn't have been a problem." We all figure that some night there's going to be a showdown where Mark comes in late, wakes Collette up and gives her a choice between which breasts she'd prefer to remain untouched.

This is me with Collette, she of the fabulous duck salad and the upcoming Sophie's Choice.

This is Margot's absolutely amazing seared scallops on cauliflower puree and parsley pesto (it's almost as much fun to say as to eat). While she was getting this ready the political discussion got a little heated. We ended up having to look up 'socialism' and 'democracy' in the dictionary. Then I made Collette look up 'fallacious', hoping that would stop all the bad blow-job jokes. No such luck. I tried to lower the tension with a rousing game of cheese or font, which is much harder than it seems like it should be.

These are the people that had to arm-wrestle to decide who would have to go home and change. Either that or have a cheese or font-off.

This is Susanne with her boeuf bourguignon a la Julia Child, which was every bit as awesome as Meryl Streep was in Julie and Julia. (Susanne, I can put your face in if you want-- let me know).

After this we played Pictionary before dessert. Also, Michael showed me this article about the guy who wrote the book I reviewed a few days ago. This article kicks my book review's ass, which is okay because I don't think anybody read it (except maybe Susanne, which I wouldn't know, because she never comments, which is fine, it's a personal choice, it's not like I live or die by comments, well it sort of is because I'm a stay at home Mom but my kids are gone most of the day although not long enough that I could get an actual nine to five JOB or anything, so I'm alone a lot and it's always nice to feel like someone's listening, but you know, whatever). It also does a great job of describing an issue that spikes my blood pressure on a regular basis. I mean I haven't read it again while sober yet, but I'm pretty sure it totally rocks.

This is my boobs and my Chocolate Macadamia Cream Satin, which I have to say turned out marvellously despite my overbeating technical difficulties (the cake. Not my breasts).

It was a great night, slightly rancorous political discussions and repeated fellatio allusions and all. I plan to make a donation to the Ottawa Food Bank in reparation and gratitude, for my friends and nights like this.

(Also, Zarah, Alison, Amber, Susanne -- did you see the links? Do the links work? Are you proud of me for learning how to do the links? I'm beyond excited about the links. Who says you can't teach an old, tired, overly anxious, slightly needy, approval-seeking dog new tricks?)

Satisfactory Combinations

I love my husband. He's a great partner, a fantastic father, and a hard worker. He's good at stuff I'm not good at. When Angus was born, he showed me how to change diapers. He's really bad with names, but he can always figure out who the voice is behind cartoon characters (of course, he can't remember the person's name so then he has to say 'you know, that guy from the movie with the junk yard and the flower pot' until I figure out who he means (because I'm the one who's good with names, but I never know who the voice is).

But I wouldn't say we're soulmates. We're less Heloise and Abelard than Jamie and Paul from Mad About You. We often don't get each other. He tries to explain a problem he has with Angus's hockey or baseball coach and I'm going 'huh? Leave the poor guy alone, he's a volunteer!'. I try to explain why we don't need to get all bent out of shape over one bad mark Angus gets and he's all 'homework is important! He needs to learn he can't just get lazy when things get difficult!' He comes home and I try to describe something totally infuriating or incandescently transportingly wonderful that happened that day and I end up sort of wanting to hit him over the head with a wooden spoon because he doesn't automatically get it.

This is all okay. Soulmates are over-rated, largely fictional, and often doomed in very unpleasant ways. I was never under the impression that marriage wasn't supposed to take work, so I consider this sort of thing a minor irritation and not a sign that we're not really meant to be together.

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Yesterday I was trying to bake something called Chocolate Macadamia Cream Satin for our dinner party tomorrow. We have potluck gourmet-ish dinner parties every couple of months or so with a group of friends, and this time I'm doing dessert. I had to bake a buttermilk chocolate cake and then slice it in half and put cream cheese white chocolate gelatin filling in it and put the top back on and then cover it in whipped cream and macadamia nuts and chocolate shavings. I was careful to read the entire recipe over a few times, because I've been burned before by starting something and realizing I've missed the part where you have to chill it for two hours or use a different bowl or read to it in Japanese or whatever. I still somehow managed to add the final ingredient to the cake batter, set the stand mixer going, then walk back to read in the recipe 'beat only until combined', before swearing and rushing back to turn off the mixer. I thought I might have to do the entire cake part again, but it did eventually set without burning. But the outside set quite a bit before the inside, which meant when I sliced off the top layer and tried to move it to a plate, it sort of fell apart. I put the filling on and stuck the top back on in pieces, figuring I could hide the damage with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, so I wasn't devastated, just irritated.

When Matt walked in and asked how it went, I said "oh fine, except the cake was a little hard to work with because I overbeat it a little..." and he immediately said "oh, I HATE when recipes say that! Don't tell me not to overbeat! I'm an overachiever! I always overbeat!".

And a thousand butterflies took wing. Apparently, in matters of baking, he's totally my soulmate.

Oh Where oh Where has my Consciousness Gone?

Today when I woke up I couldn't remember what colour my kitchen was.

When I was living in apartments, I swore that I would never have a house painted Builder's White. So when we moved in we painted (and by this I mean we made my Dad paint) bold colours. Medium-dark blue in the family room, yellow in the kitchen, terra cotta in the living room and forest green in the vestibule.

I'm still glad I vanquished the Builder's White, but I've been over these colours for quite a while now. The problem is we're too lazy and have too many bookshelves to make painting over most of them anything that's going to happen soon. But a couple of summers ago my husband and my father replaced the crappy speed-bumped carpet and peely kitchen linoleum with some really nice laminate tile. And while the family room was empty my Dad painted over the blue with a lovely cafe au lait colour. I just suddenly couldn't remember if he'd painted over the yellow in the kitchen also.

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I came downstairs to check. He hadn't. I wish he had, but that's really not germane. I couldn't remember WHAT COLOUR MY KITCHEN WAS.

Then Angus's friend Noah's Mom called. Noah's sleeping over here tonight because it's a P.D. Day tomorrow, which means we can have sleepovers without worrying about the hockey schedule. She asked if I wanted her to bring Noah over after dinner or before dinner or what. I said "oh, I told Angus yesterday I'd pick the two of them and Eve up after school". Short silence. "I guess I should have probably let you know that too."

She's still letting Noah come over. Luckily I have a few hours to schedule a brain scan before I have to go pick them up.

My Gay Marriage Post

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I'm ripping this off from C.J. at Don't Lick the Ferrets because this is my month to blog on Big Issues in the interest of honesty and full disclosure and having something to blog about every single goddamned day.

Here are my thoughts in a nutshell: Gay Folks? Feel free to marry. Marry away. Marry your asses off.

You know when people say "Give me one good reason?" I haven't heard that one good reason why homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to marry. What I have heard is a lot of reasons that amount to (not to put too fine a point on it) hooey.

They can't have kids? Well yes, they can. Lots of heterosexuals can't have kids simply by having sex with each other either. Some of them don't want to. Some of them are too old to. They're allowed to get married.

It takes away from the sanctity of heterosexual marriage? Well, I don't agree that it does, but even if it did, aren't the straight folks doing a pretty good job of sanctity-detracting themselves? What with the rampant divorce rate, Vegas chapels and such? Maybe we should slap a few restrictions on how and why straight people are allowed to marry if we want to make out that marriage is such a holy and pristine institution.

My mother, whom I dearly love, and who has to be pardoned for some things due to being raised by rabidly Catholic Polish parents, has one of those rock-solid arguments against gay marriage:

Mom: "I don't care if they get married, I just don't want it to be called the same thing as my marriage."

Me: "Well, then it's not true to say you don't care if they get married, is it? You don't care if they get civilly united, or legally joined, or painted or tractored or whatever, but you don't want them to get 'married'? Have I got that right?

Mom: "I've never liked your hair that way."

So what it boils down to for me is that the only real argument against gay marriage, for those who argue against it, is that they don't think people should be gay, they don't like gay people, and this is a way they can deprive gay people of a basic human right under the guise of righteousness and legality.

What a bunch of weenies.

November 11

My husband's grandfather fought in World War II. He lied about his age to sign up, he was one of very few of his platoon to survive, and when he got back, his father walked past him on the street without recognizing him.

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The first time my husband took me to his grandparents' home town to meet them, Grandpa started telling war stories. Some of them were funny. Some of them were horrifying. He showed us a shaving brush with a handle deformed by a piece of shrapnel -- this happened while he was actually shaving with it. I thought this was just what they did when Matt visited, but after we went to bed Matt said this was the first time he'd heard any of these stories.

Since I was introduced to him as Allison McCaskill, Grandpa figured it was safe to tell me stories about the wacky Polish regiments he ran in to. I finally decided I should probably let him know my mother's maiden name. He toned the stories down, but not by much.

A few times we've gone to Smiths Falls to take Nana and Grandpa to the Remembrance Day dinner at the Legion. Apart from one tricky incident involving too many double scotches and some heckling of the peacekeepers, I love being able to do this. This year we can't go because Matt has visitors at work that are keeping him there late and I don't have anyone to watch the kids, and it's too late to take them especially when they're both just recovering from being sick. I feel bad that we can't go. He deserves his night to dress in his uniform and be honoured and drink too much scotch. They all do.

Indian Summer

Eve thinks this is her gangsta look.
(Naturally. All Gangstas wear tights with hearts on 'em).