The Bloomin' Blog

Spring Lines

2012-02-24T14:00:00.001-05:00

It's my birthday and though I don't feel the whole of 39 years old and I don't look the whole of 39 years old, I am.

And since it's my birthday, I'll cry if I want to. No, I'll post about fashion if I want to.

I haven't posted about it in a while, mainly because things got crazy busy and then things got crazy winter and I don't like writing or thinking about fashion when it's too cold out to show off clothes.

Now, spring is peeking out on some warmer and warmer days and the sun seems brighter and brighter and I am, once again, thinking about clothes. Not that I'm a clothes horse, the Salvation Army is still my preferred boutique.

In any case, saw a mega issue by InStyle and picked it up. One of the first things I noticed was the cleaner lines in most of the ads as well as the Style fashion spreads.

For instance,

No collar and one button. Sleek and chic.

A sheath dress by MaxMara

A more feminine sheath dress from Banana Republic

To see more of these Spring fashion trends and the sort of minimalist collars and chic lines I talking about, head over here at Style.com for a virtual fashion show.

In the meantime, I'm headed out for a Sarah Ruhl play for my b-day, dinner at what I hope will become the nicest (at least bestest food) restaurant in town tomorrow night, before heading to Chicago for the zoo that is AWP (9300 writerly folk!!!! And that just those who register, some just show up for all the after parties and readings) on Sunday.

Good Enough or Great Enough?

2012-02-15T15:02:00.002-05:00

My friend Pam Parker asked me to do a guest blog post for her after I won the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award. It's up now at www.pamwrites.net

Enjoy!

Detox Diet

2012-02-15T05:00:00.001-05:00

While grocery shopping, I saw a new magazine in the check out lane. It's titled, "Whole Living" and looked interesting. I picked it up and after reading it, decided I'd try a detox diet.

I'm not a dieter. Save for the whole pregnancy/breastfeeding stint I did from summer of 2000 to summer of 2003, I have been the same weight (within 2-4 pounds) of what I've been since I was 20. I have been various levels of fit within that weight range, however. This is why I discount BMI, suggested weight based on height charts, and all other manner of weight variables. I think, we have become too obsessed about how we look and what we weigh. We should, simply, listen to our bodies.

My body has been telling me something recently. I have cut out a great deal of gluten from my diet due to my husband's gluten sensitivity. When I do have gluten, however, my face reddens as though I have a mild sunburn. And sometimes I get these raised bumps, which don't look remotely like pimples, but are there nonetheless. So, if I did a full-on detox diet, what might happen and how might I feel?

Philip and I planned for this once I returned from Key West. I went grocery shopping on Sunday and stocked up for a week's worth of recipes. Some seemed weird (and yes, we did have this. It was chewy...). Others sounded delicious (after all, I do love me some beets). On Monday morning, we hit the ground running with a grapefruit, carrot, and ginger breakfast detox juice.

We've done three detox juices/smoothies- the above mentioned, the green machine smoothie, the antioxidant smoothie. We've had the beet soup, the kale slaw with red cabbage and carrots, the dried fruit and nut bites, the minty pea dip, and cranberry-pumpkin seed trail mix.

All seemed to be going well until the afternoon I took our puppy for a walk. Well, he took me for a walk. He's 9 months old and a chocolate lab. We walked two and a half miles and my arms are usually sore from his leading me ;-0. I got back and about two hours after the walk, I broke down and retoxed.

Mind you, I had gluten-free Honey Nut Chex with unsweetened almond milk, but still, I feel guilty. Philip has already had to add more significant amounts of protein to his Week 1 detox meals and I fear as I get back into my usual routine, I might, too.

Thus far, it's been interesting. I actually like having to prepare each and everything we eat with careful consideration. We have some quick and easy healthy standards, but it's nice to zen out in the kitchen and be more mindful of what we're eating. Sometimes, though, it's a PITA and I'd like to find the balance between the two extremes. It has, however, definitely motivated me to get back to the community garden and also invest in half a CSA share.

Submitting an "Award-Winning" Short Story

2012-02-08T15:08:00.002-05:00

I said I was spinning too many plates, but I guess I'm holding my own. ;-0

So, as to the post I made earlier about giving my "award-winning" short story one more try at a traditional literary journal, I was only able to find 10 publications to submit to. This doesn't count the ones that I've already submitted to that have rejected me or the ones that I've submitted to and not yet heard from.

See, I drew a line in the sand. I said I would not put this story in a publication below a certain tier. My friend Rebecca doesn't submit to online only publications. We all have our lines. So I identified where that line was for me and there were about 20 journals. Then, I checked their submission guidelines. Several did not accept simultaneous submissions- Boo! Hiss! Others had a focus that didn't match my story- they were Christian-focused, or health-focused, etc.

One I rejected. It accepted simultaneous submissions and didn't have an area focus. But there was a misspelling on its very sparsely-worded submission page AND they wanted $5 for the privilege of submitting to their publication. Thanks, but no thanks.

So, a few days' work ahead of me with conference applications and short story submitting. I'll wait out this traditional short story publication route until August...

Not Finishing Novels

2012-02-07T16:09:00.002-05:00

I don't always finish novels. Reading them, that is. Other writers have vastly different views on this. Once I was shushed when I admitted this. Other times, writers have been, "Hell, yeah! Why waste my time on a shitty book?"

I recently put aside two novels I'd started. I picked up a third. I immediately got into the third and soon became very curious about why the third novel held my interest and the other two didn't. I'm going to name names. Margaret Atwood says not to read your reviews. Ever. So, if you're an author who reads your reviews or googles yourself or what have you, I'm going with Peggy. Shame on you.

(An aside, sorry to be quoting Margaret Atwood so much. She's just so damned quotable.)

And if you're a friend or editor or agent of one of these authors. Shame on you if you share their reviews with them.

Alrighty, with that out of the way...

I put down Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge in the middle of Chapter 12 (p. 164 of a 758 page novel).

I put down Paula McClain's The Paris Wife at the end of Chapter 23 (p. 150 of a 314 page novel).

I am two-thirds the way through Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs and will definitely finish it.

On the surface, the former two books have a helluva lot more going for them than Lurie's. They each have a great premise:

The Invisible Bridge-

Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter’s recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his- and his family's- history. From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in labor camps, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour.

The Paris Wife-

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

Then there's Foreign Affairs-

Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.

Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to.

Now, without knowing anything about anything else regarding the authors, their pedigrees, prizes, agents, editors, publishing houses and all the other noise that can sometimes fool lay readers and literary types alike, which novel would you choose? Probably Lurie's book would be last, right?

I'd love to say it's because the former two novels are set in Paris and I'm not fond of Paris and the latter is set in London and I heart London, but no. There's something not clicking with the first two and definitely with the third.

I was mulling this when Margaret Atwood's voice sounded in my head. "Vary the beginnings of sentences." I grabbed my Atwood novels and sure enough, she had vastly different sentences throughout each and every paragraph of each and every chapter of each and every novel. I sensed immediately that The Paris Wife did not. This is because when I gave up on it, I do what I usually do and I go and read reader reviews to see if others had a similar experience. Indeed, I found this one from Rose-

3 stars only because I didn't know much about them, so I learned some things.

To me, this book felt flat.

Like a travel diary with lots of name dropping.
We went _____, we met _____.

I didn't really feel for Hadley.
I didn't really feel for young Ernest.

She lost him to another woman.
She was better off anyway.

So, I looked again and just a skim reveals that McClain does not tend to vary her sentence beginnings very much at all. Premise wise, she had me. Even though I know the outcome of the story, I wanted to see how it happened blow by blow. I wanted to rubberneck...The book isn't successful on the sentence level.

The Invisible Bridge, however, is successful on the sentence level. So what was the deal? It reads like a dyed-in-the-wool short story writer trying her hand at the novel. There, I said it. There is a quality to these books that is so tragic. You know the writers are good story tellers, but the novel isn't their medium. This becomes evident on the narrative level. The Invisible Bridge not only drags on with not much happening in 164 pages (which is equivalent to nearly half the length of most literary fiction novel debuts), but it is actually predictable. I know things are going to happen before they do and it's not in a good way. Then the stupid ass protagonist doesn't see it coming...

Lurie's book works on the sentence level. There's also a "je ne sais quoi", as we used to say in Louisiana. An inexplicable quality that makes something special. I'd have to say it's the voice.

Voice is a nice little buzz word in literary circles. Whenever an agent or editor says that it's the writer's voice that draws them in, take that with a grain of salt. I think it might have been true once. The rule rather than the exception. Maybe there's some old school publishing folk who still hold true. Now it's the exception rather than the rule. Increasingly, though it's bullshit when voice is bantered around by the powers that be. It's bullshit because I am coming across more and more debut novels that don't have interesting or distinct or idiosyncratic voices. They just have interesting premises. (Notable exceptions are Rebecca Makkai's The Borrower and Renee Dodd's The Cabinet of Wonders (I loved Peter Mountford's The Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, too, but it excels more on the narrative level for me.))

This voice degradation, if you will, is probably the result of the market. "You can't sell voice." Look at Sam Lipsyte. We have problems selling our literary stylists. "You capture more readers with an interesting premise." Which is all fine and dandy when an interesting premise is executed well. I'm finding that more often than not, it doesn't happen.

They fail on the sentence level.

They fail on the narrative level.

They fail.

At least, for me.

I would rather read a novel with a completely mundane premise that succeeds on the sentence level- like all of Alice McDermott's novels save her first. Or a more commercial novel that executes it's interesting premise well at the narrative level.

Oh, so rarely, a novel will do all. It has an interesting premise. It succeeds on the sentence level. It succeeds on the narrative level. It's what I bang my head continually against the wall in order to achieve.

Self-Publishing a Short Story

2012-02-07T08:14:00.004-05:00

I now have "an award-winning short story." By its very nature, it is unpublished. Almost every single contest, conference, workshop, and literary dilly-o requires the submission of "unpublished work." As I just got this award and there's a massive lead time on journal submission, journal reading, journal rejection or acceptance, and then possible journal publication, it's likely this short story will remain that way for at least half a year or longer.

I read an excerpt from this short story at a packed house at the Key West Literary Seminar.

Afterwards, several people asked to read the short story in its entirety. One of the KWLS staff members said he, too, got many requests from others to read my short story. I told him to let me get settled back home, have another looksy at it, revise it again, and I'd email it to him.

Then, I attended Margaret Atwood's workshop and there was a discussion about my unpublished "award-winning short story."

"Put it out as a Kindle single," she said. Over the course of the four days with her, I continually got the impression that she was a big supporter of DIY writing careers, including doing some self-publishing.

I seriously considered it, but then realized that should I offer it as a Kindle single, it would be published and no longer a viable submission option for this year's round of conference applications. I decided I'd wait. Try "traditional" publication methods for six months and see what happens. Come August, I decided, I'd see if I'd take even more of Atwood's advice.

Then I saw this from Matt Debenham. He had an unpublished award finalist short story that he decided to put out as a single. I'll be following this "experiment" of his closely.

Anyone else consider self-publishing a short story? Does it being an award-winner or contest finalist give it more clout?

Plate Spinning

2012-02-06T10:09:00.001-05:00

I'm back into plate spinning mode. Thus, another season of crickets and tumbleweeds here....

A Year of Reading- 2011 Edition

2011-12-31T05:00:00.001-05:00

If there was a theme that could be draped over my reading year, it'd have to be the year of reading movies. I've grown to hate watching a movie only to find out it's based on a book. And sometimes watching a movie based on a book is annoying when it's a poor adaptation. This year, however, I was pleasantly surprised with the adaptations I've been able to see and the novels they were based on:

True Grit by Charles Portis is a great little read, funny and moving in both emotion and plot. The film with Matt Damon (another great performance) and Jeff Bridges stays so true to the book it's probably the best example of my reading movies year. And it's a Coen brothers film, so what else could I expect. I heart the Coen brothers.

Other contenders for the top spot are Bram Stoker's Dracula, Pygmalion (a play) by Bernard Shaw,and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient. Francis Ford Coppola did Dracula justice, My Fair Lady is a favorite musical of mine, and a reading of The English Patient will easily and fully clarify any seemingly missing gaps in the film. And as an aside, does Ralph Fiennes ever play a good, normal character? He's always playing someone evil- Voldemort in Harry Potter flicks and a evil Nazi guy in Schindler's List- or someone off- Strange Days, The Constant Gardener, The English Patient. I wonder what he's like in real life...

Adaptations that strayed from the book, but still were worthy interpretations include Children of Men, which was written by P.D. James and the film stars Clive Owen, Fannie Flag's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and whose film has become a mainstay in the Southern film canon, and White Oleander by Janet Fitch, which was an extremely lyrical novel about a Murphy's Law-addled girl and the film was just as artistic and depressing.

Films I have yet to see based on books: The Help, The House of Mirth, and The Wilding, the latter of which Ben's announced on Facebook, if not in other places, has been optioned and is heading into production. I am foaming at the mouth for A Game of Thrones, which I read over a decade ago and decided to reread when I learned that Season 1 of the miniseries was done airing. Unfortunately, I'm not a cable or satellite gal and have never been a premium channel kind of girl and it seems all of the best dramas of the past five-ish years have been produced and shown on these expensive channels. So, I wait patiently for its Netflix/DVD release and continue to read the series. I am picking up things that I missed the first time. George R.R. Martin is definitely dropping hints throughout as to what is to come in later books in the planned seven book series. For the most part, these hints seem to come from prophesies by religious folks, dreams, old folk tales the main characters have not yet heard before. Should be interesting to read the last three books to see how it all shakes down.

Here's the full list of books I read this year in reverse chronological order:

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The Children of Men by P.D. James
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw
Resistance by Anita Shreve
Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve
The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism by Peter Mountford
The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Touch by Alexi Zentner
Volt by Alan Heathcock
House Arrest by Ellen Meeropol
True Grit by Charles Portis
Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez
Shroud by John Banville
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Wilding by Benjamin Percy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The Check Arrived

2011-12-03T07:19:00.001-05:00

I've already posted about this a couple three times on Facebook, but now I'll get all self-promoting and braggy here because the check came yesterday.

I am the 2012 recipient of the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award.

Vocabulary Party

2011-11-30T09:43:00.000-05:00

My kids finished their first vocabulary book. As you might recall, it was Sadlier-Oxford's Vocabulary Workshop, Book A. This is normally a 6th grade level book, but we started them early. Now, we're four lessons into the next book (7th grade) and I think our Vocabulary Party is a big motivating factor.

Our color scheme was black and white due to most all print being such. I looked for Alphabits, but apparently they don't make them anymore...and we had Alphabet soup.

We also decorated some cupcakes with some of their vocabulary words (the short ones, at least).

Samara decorated our white board with some of the words

And all three worked on place cards for us using some of the vocabulary words that might describe some of us.

Here's Shoshie's:

And mine:

I Have Fallen in Love

2011-11-29T06:07:00.003-05:00

...with vegetables.

I never really, truly liked vegetables. I think it's the result of growing up in Louisiana where rice, crawfish, shrimp, and catfish were abundant, but the wet, semi-tropical climate was too hot or rainy for vegetables to grow well. So they were all shipped in. And, I don't think most people know how to prepare veggies to their best.

Working from a recipe I came across, I set about doing me up some beets.

FWIW, I don't know what to name this recipe. If I wrote it for a menu, I'd probably call it a salad, but Beet Salad doesn't sound quite as delicious as this dish actually is.

Ingredients:
6 beets with greens attached
2 sweet onions, such as Vidalia
olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
honey
coarse ground dijon mustard, such as Grey Poupon
walnuts
Feta cheese
dried dill weed

First you get some whole beets with the greens attached. Then roast the beets, which is cake. Cut off all but two or three inches of the beet greens, rub the beets themselves with a coating of olive oil, cover with foil, and bake for 45 to 60 minutes (until you can slice the thickest beet through) at 350 degrees F.

Meanwhile, chop up the beets greens into bite size pieces. All of it. Don't leave out the stem part. With some olive oil, saute some sweet onions and the beet greens. The ratio of onions to beets should be one medium-sized sweet onion for three beets.

The original recipe used a plain Balsamic vinaigrette, but I knew it could be better. I set Philip on the task of improving it and based on our culinary instincts and confirming it with our new and already much loved and much recommended book, The Flavor Bible, we did. This "vinaigrette" will work for two onions and six beets with their greens:

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard (either country dijon or harvest coarse ground)

Once the beets are roasted and cooled, peel off the outer skin and then slice thinly. Make a bed of beet greens and onions and stack/layer sliced beets on top.

Then, toast some chopped walnuts (biggish pieces (I actually hand break up the pieces)). Sprinkle on top with some Feta cheese and dill weed. (We were lucky with the dill as a bunch was growing in our garden plot and we harvested it and dehydrated it immediately. The color and flavor can't compare to store bought dill.)

Once assembled, drizzle the vinaigrette over it. Tastes equally well warmed up or cooled down.

Reblogging

2011-11-29T05:47:00.002-05:00

Things feel as though they are calming down. Only feel, which is almost, but not quite seem, which may, in fact, be quite far from are. In any case, I will probably be blogging a bit more in the near future.

Gluten-Free Pear and Blue Cheese Galette

2011-09-14T07:23:00.004-04:00

(Because Rashena asked ;-0)

Philip and I always have a bit of a conundrum when we want to eat out at a fine dining restaurant. We almost always cook better at home and don't have to regret the expense. So, for our sixteenth wedding anniversary, I once again modified a recipe and we hit the kitchen to cook it together.

Firstly, I had to modify the crust to make it gluten-free.

Crust Ingredients

1 1/4 cups white rice flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup corn starch
2 teaspoons xantham gum
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1 stick of unsalted butter

Mix together. Then cut into the dry ingredients 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter cut into small pieces. Do this like how you'd do really good pie crust (ya know with the Crisco?). When the mix is properly cut in, add about 6 tablespoons of ice water and stir together, and continue to add ice water until the dough forms a ball. Form a 6-inch circle, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight. (We did overnight, giving the dough a 20 second nuke in the microwave to make it pliable)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Filling Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion (again we use Vidalia) thinly sliced into wedges
3 large shallots, thinly sliced into wedges
1/4 cup maple syrup (NO SUBSTITUTIONS!!! Do not soil this beauty with fake syrup, I beg of you!)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 large pears (I'm always about the Bosc pears!), peeled, cored, and cut into wedges
3 ounces mild blue cheese (we chose a blue-veined monterey cheese), cut into 8 thin wedges

Heat olive oil and saute the onion and shallots until lightly carmelized, about 7ish minutes. In a bowl, combine maple syrup, vanilla, and cardamon. Toss pear wedges in the syrup mixture to coat, then leave them to soak in the mixture.

Working on a piece of parchment paper, roll out the dough until it's about 14 inches in diameter. Put on a pizza baking sheet. Put the onion mixture in the middle, leaving a 2-inch border around the edge. Evenly distribute the pears in the middle (again leaving the border). Keep the maple mixture the pears've been soaking in.

Fold up the corners of the dough up and over the edges of the ingredients, making sure to seal the dough (like pie crust). Place on lower rack of oven and bake until golden about 2o minutes. Top with the blue cheese and bake for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the glaze.

Glaze Ingredients

Reserved maple mixture (that the pears soaked in)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon rosemary leaves

Combine the reserved maple syrup mixture, sugar, water, and rosemary leaves in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Bring to a low boil and cook until the sugar is melted and a slightly thick syrup is created, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Use a pastry brush and spread the glaze on the galette. Let cool for 15 minutes before serving.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS

Use two Vidalia onions instead of one. There didn't seem to be enough onions with this

Cut the pear wedges into smaller pieces. It looked nice, but made eating it gracefully a bit problematic

Bloomsburg Flood

2011-09-10T13:47:00.006-04:00

Well, thises and thats don't seem so important when 25% of the town where you live is underwater:

Corner of Iron and Eighth

Close up of Iron and Eighth

Floating wood from a lumber yard

Back of the Fire Department

Market Street

Public Works Department

Backyards

Low lying spot

Submerged car

Somewhere between this spot and the actual river is our community garden and the youth football practice field

The irony of "Canal Street" is not lost on me

Unblogging

2011-08-31T07:37:00.002-04:00

un- prefix

2 (added to nouns) a lack of

I haven't been blogging. I won't be blogging much in the future. I have this going on and that and various other sorts of thises and thats I won't be writing about at the moment. So, we're back to crickets and tumbleweeds in these here parts.

Homeschool Uniforms, Part II

2011-08-17T08:43:00.003-04:00

I have been getting a slew of hits here from people googling some aspect of homeschool uniforms and I would like to further illuminate our experience with them.

I just want to say that at a point in our homeschool endeavors, our three children were NOT taking school seriously. We have a pretty low key household, they have chores, etc., but the environment at home is the opposite of high strung. This versus a public school environment in which there are strict rules and regulations about answering only the questions asked. Getting permission to go to the bathroom. "Sit and get" type instruction a great deal of the time. The inherent structure in such a learning environment, therefore, instills a seriousness.

However, at home, wearing pajamas to learn middle school science created a casualness that was not conducive to rigorous instruction. So, we made our kids wear uniforms. They weren't as comfortable and they began to take school far more seriously. Then, however, they intrinsically worked hard and did their best, taking school seriously when it began and we no longer saw the need for the uniforms. If, however, they began to slack, to be late to start, to not finish their work, etc., we threatened to make them wear the uniforms again. This deterred them enough to reengage and they have never worn them again.

Marinara Sauce

2011-08-08T19:01:00.004-04:00

We are only growing three types of tomatoes in our veggie garden- cherry, grape, and plum (Roma).

Recently, we had a bunch of Romas...

And I decided to use this recipe for marinara sauce from Giada de Laurentiis. Which, of course, was not perfect as it used CANNED diced tomatoes. Also, WTF, America? Why can't you list the amount of a substance in a can by VOLUME instead of WEIGHT? Here I was trying to figure out how many cups of tomato goop I need by multiplying the serving size per can, which for 14.5 ounces in WEIGHT, was 3.5 servings of 1/2 cup each times 2, which made my head hurt.

In any case, I threw what Roma tomatoes we had into the 26 year old food processor that I sort of inherited third hand. It was actually a wedding present for my brother and since I can safely say that neither the groom nor bride really ever cooked, the gift of a food processor just strikes me as hilarious now. Well, they never used it and gave it to my parents and then my mom figured that they didn't use it and gave it to Philip and I who have put it to the use it should have had for a quarter of a century. Turns out that my dad actually DID use the thing, but by the time he found out what had happened to it, it was out of state....but I digress.

Turns out 16 good sized Roma tomatoes will make about three cups of tomato goop.

We basically followed the recipe spot on, adding more onion (Vidalia all the way) and garlic, as is our taste.

Oh, mein Gott! This was soooooo good. I think if we have any more we'll have to break out the canning equipment and start putting some away as this was soooo delicious and wonderful that spaghetti sauce, marinara from a jar, or even restaurant stuff doesn't compare!

Here's it over rice spaghetti. Sorry about the blurry. My camera's a little wonky sometimes.

News

2011-08-05T17:22:00.002-04:00

Feast or famine...I swear.

Recently learned that I will be workshopping with Margaret Atwood. Yes, THE Margaret Atwood. She's my favorite living writer...nuff said.

Learned today that one of the irons I had in the fire earlier this year panned out, big time. Courtney Tenz and I worked very hard on an AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) proposal and it got accepted! It's our first proposal and we're thrilled to go to Chicago and see it through.

"Writing Class: Representing Socio-Economic Realities in Your Work.

Courtney Tenz, Josh Weil, Ru Freeman, Sabra Wineteer, Sterling Holywhitemountain
As economic realities devolve the broader American Dream, writers are shaping a new U.S. life narrative. Writing Class collects contemporary authors' responses to this socio-economic shift by asking: will class-focused writing replace the American race and ethnicity paradigm? Can such a shift illuminate the differences in income and status and lead to greater understanding? Or will the money gap cut out most socio-economic classes and usher in a new era of class appropriation in literature?"

Lots of familiar names in the other panels and readings, so it looks like it'll end being one hell of a party!

Gluten-Free Gourmet Pizza

2011-07-26T18:41:00.005-04:00

I decided to make Philip some pizza and his having tried many, many recipes for gluten-free baked goods- buns, biscuits, bread, etc.- I decided to research my chosen recipe a great deal before committing to a gluten-free pizza crust recipe.

I chose this one from gluten-free goddess. I also decided to recreate the pizza I had in St. Helena, California at Tra Vigne when I was there in 2009 for the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. My friend Valerie and I headed over there after our tour of the Beringer vineyard...

...which turned me onto port, but only a couple three times a month. ;-0

Valerie had some sort of squid ink pasta

And I had a pizza made with arugula, Gorgonzola cheese, black mission figs, and balsamic vinegar.

So it was with this mission, that I began. Three stores later, I had my specialty gluten-free flours, my arugula, and my regular figs (I don't think I'd be able to find black mission figs this side of the Mississippi unless I went to NYC). I had wanted to use my own arugula.

But it wasn't big enough to start harvesting, so I bought some from the store. Philip came home about half way through the process and determined that the store-bought arugula might be too wangy to simply throw on the top like they did at Tra Vigne. So...we baked some of the wang out of it.

Not as pretty, but nearly as delicious. Next time we'll either follow the recipe for the crust exactly (two 12-inch pizzas instead of the one 16-inch we did) or bake the crust a little longer. We'll also try our own fresh, less wang arugula!

A Nice Bonding Experience

2011-07-22T15:32:00.004-04:00

Despite the heat, Samara and I got in the kitchen to make some cookies from scratch. I grew up on the usual kid staples of processed cookies like Oreos, Famous Amos chocolate chip (best when dunked deeply in ice-cold whole moo milk), animal crackers, and Nabisco vanilla wafers, AKA 'nilla wafers.

We followed the recipe exactly and the cookies that came out were, in fact, vanilla wafers. Knowing no different, I was really surprised how nice they tasted. The recipe made a huge batch and required a filling, so Samara and I would drop the cookies and while they baked spread the filling and sandwich the cookies.

At some point in the process, Samara says, "I like baking with you, Mommy. It's a nice bonding experience!"

A Diva in the Making

2011-07-21T08:51:00.003-04:00

I've often talked about the proto-diva in our house. Now, she has gone public...

Addition- Here are the lyrics Shoshana wrote for the song. She had less than a day to bang them out. Not too shabby for a 9-year-old:

There's a world called Neverland,
That growups don't understand.
There's Peter Pan and Wendy,
The pirate ship and Seven Seas.
The crocodile who goes tick-tock,
Only cause he swallowed a clock.
Michael and John with top hat and teddy bear
They keep flying in the air.

Peter Pan in Neverland
da, da, da, da, da, da, da (X2)

Sorbet Nation

2011-07-19T13:20:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I know. Sorbet Nation makes about as much sense as Soup Plantation...

'Round these parts we've been Jonesing for an ice cream maker. Not the old school kind with the need for ice and rock salt and all that. No, we wanted a new gel bowl dilly-o, but I didn't want some brand that was going to crap out after a year's use.

So...two weeks ago, Samara and I headed to the bestest department store in our littlish burg and found a Cuisinart brand gel bowl ice cream/frozen yogurt/sorbet maker. Bonus, it was half off its original price.

We've made six kinds so far- peach, banana (twice), coconut, strawberry, mango, and orange. I don't doubt that we would've made some everyday if the gel bowl didn't take 16-24 hours to refreeze and I had the energy to puree, strain, and sorbet up some more. New to the wish list is an extra gel bowl.

Most all sorbet recipes are the same. You combine one cup of sugar with one cup of water, heat on medium high heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves. Then you blend/puree this sugar syrup with fruit. If its a seedy/fibrous fruit, you push it through a sieve and only use the "juice" for the sorbet. Ya chill it for a couple of hours, then put it in the machine for about 20 minutes. Transfer to a freezer-worthy container and enjoy until gone!

Here's what I've discovered:

Our first batch of sorbet was made with frozen peaches and it came out well with a sugar/water ratio of 1 to 1 as in, one cup of sugar to one cup of water sugar syrup solution. With fresh fruit, however, no go. I did this with our first batch of banana sorbet and blech! Too sweet! I used three ripe bananas and a one cup water to one cup sugar mixture. For the second batch of banana sorbet, I used four and a half ripe bananas and a sugar syrup made of only one cup water to 1/2 cup sugar. This was not only the perfect amount of sweetness, but also the perfect measurements for our 1 1/2 quart Cuisinart ice cream maker.

For the coconut sorbet...1/2 cup sugar, one cup water heated into a sugar solution and four cups (2 regular-sized cans) coconut milk. Cake!

Banana and coconut sorbet have been the easiest by far as there is no pureeing and straining required.

The other fruits? Well, a bit more of a PITA. After I'd gotten my sugar solution (again one cup water to HALF cup sugar as I was using fresh fruits) I put it in a blender. Then I filled it up with fresh fruit- strawberry in one case- until I had about 4 1/2 cups. Hit the puree button and blend. Then, pour and mash through a sieve until all you have is liquid.

Not one to chuck stuff, I've made fruit leather with the pulp. This I did by lining a cookie sheet with foil, spraying with non-stick cooking spray (as the fruit is mixed with a sugar solution and more likely to stick), and spreading the fruit pulp in an even layer across the lined cookie sheet. I baked it at 275 degrees F for 45 minutes and then left it in the oven overnight. It came out well, a little seedier than anything you'd get via Fruit Roll Ups, of course, but more fiber and no waste!

For the mango sorbet, I had very ripe mangoes (on sale a la supermercado!!!) and I simply peeled off the skin and hand juiced the boogers. I would have probably spent a lot longer cubing it proper, pureeing the cubes, and then pressing the mango pulp through the sieve. By "juicing" them, I got a lot of liquid. I used three very ripe mangoes, another 1 to 1/2 water to sugar syrup solution and it came out great! In fact, the hand juicing seemed so effective that when I ran what mango guts I had through the sieve, I only had about two tablespoons of pulp left- not enough for a fruit leather.

Heh

2011-07-06T15:55:00.000-04:00

Only 15 women writers made The Millions' list of the 66 "Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2011 Book Preview" works of fiction.

Kale Chips

2011-06-29T16:10:00.005-04:00

So, we're loving kale up in our house! Not only are we growing some, but we've also bought some. Three times we've made this yummy recipe (the last time a double batch) and three times we've eaten it all up within a day.

I came across a Yahoo! little listy about healthy snacks and saw one with kale chips. I googled "kale chips" with the ingredients listed on the Yahoo! Shine thingy and viola! a recipe for them. We had everything except the tahini, so we leashed the pup and all strolled down to the grocery store fourish blocks away to get some. He was such a good boy and for his second time out on his leash, did a great job.

Right now the chips are in the dehydrator and we'll have to see how they come out. Since Philip is still eating the kale raw straight out of the fridge, I'm sure this will prove to be a new favorite snack. He does, however, seem to have a preference for winterbor kale.

So this is what I figured out. The tahini mixture is about enough to cover the leaves of a grocery store-sized bundle. It will also filled up the entirety of a four layer dehydrator and I only ran ours for three hours, 45 minutes and they were super crunchy. Also, there's a reason to love the winterbor kale. It's not as wangy as other kinds of kale. So, if you aren't a kale fan, try the super curly kind/winterbor and you might be surprised. This recipe made about a gallon-sized bag of kale. I put it in the bag around 7 PM last night. Half of it is already gone....

Wisdom From the Dying

2011-06-27T07:53:00.002-04:00

This came across my Facebook feed and I thought it worth reposting. It's from Bronnie Ware, a former hospice nurse on the top five regrets of dying people. (Bolded, enlarged, and italicized emphasis added.)

REGRETS OF THE DYING

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

(This is what I, Sabra, once labeled the "content to be miserable" character flaw).

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Dressing Casual

2011-06-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

We have been dressing quite casual around these parts lately. One- it's hottish. Two- we don't have many places to be. Three- we have a new addition to the family that would make dressing up, well, problematic.

I already know how to "sit" and I'm only 8 weeks old.

Introductions

Welcomes

Playtime

Tuckered out

Vegetable Stock

2011-06-22T11:42:00.004-04:00

It's been a long time since Philip and I bought a cookbook that we regularly use. But I've got new stuff going in the garden and well, I get a little tired of searching out recipes on the internet when I don't know a rutabaga from a turnip. So I bought Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love.

The first thing I made was vegetable stock, because this is something we use frequently, but it always seems rather PITA to buy it in a carton. Usually, it's 1- expensive, 2- too salty, or 3- at a store we don't do our weekly grocery shopping at. So, because I have a little more time on my hands (to be explained more fully tomorrow), I decided to get into the kitchen and make some.

I roughly used the Vegetable Love recipe, omitting the leeks (as they were expensive (next year, I'll grow my own) and roughly tripling the amounts and once again, put our pressure cooker to use as a stock pot.

Celery leaves

Carrots

Tomatoes

Altogether with parsley stems, onions, spinach, bay leaves, and olive oil.

After the veggies came to a boil and then simmered and then cooled, I strained them through a sieve using a ladle both to scoop and to press down on the vegetables and squeeze out as much veggie juice as possible. Then, I poured the juice into ice cube trays for freezing.

This seemed the best way to be able to easily access what I've made. One regular-sized ice cube is about 1/4 cup, so four cubes equals one cup. Shown here, there are 14 cups of veggie stock. This, of course, was only the first batch of freezing. I have three more to go. So, I made about 56 cups of low sodium vegetable broth for about $12 or about $0.21 a cup. It would have been even cheaper had I grown my own tomatoes. The cost of one carton (4 cups) of low sodium vegetable stock at our local grocery store is $4.79 or about $1.20 a cup. Savings = $55 (again, more if I'd grow most of the ingredients myself. This I'll try next year and update on the savings on savings.)

Sweet and Savory Kale

2011-06-20T05:00:00.001-04:00

This is the first year that I have planted cool season veggies in my garden. I got in some peas, lettuces, arugula, cabbages, broccoli, radishes, beets, swiss chard, and kale. A lot of these things are not part of my diet. In fact, I loathe cooked peas (frozen I don't mind) and the smell of cooked peas is gag-worthy for me. I wondered if fresh peas would be like frozen. Turns out to be a moot point as the poor things were over pounded by the twice the amount above normal rainfall we've had this years so far...like 15 inches more than average. I've never had swiss chard or kale. But I'm growing them anyway.

Most of my cool season vegetables are doing okay. The arugula bolted early on due to temps in the 90s that we had for a while. I'm thinking this should be an indoor plant project and will honey do Philip into a window shelf one of these days. The cabbages look a little anemic, but I've already harvested my first batch of radishes and the swiss chard and kale are doing great. I brought some of these home recently and Philip looked at my piles of greens and asked what I had.

Fresh cut kale

Turns out, neither one of us has ever eaten kale. Kale is one of those foods that's always getting press for its benefits. Having good PR and getting eaten seem to be two different things however. Philip tore off a bit, took a taste, and then ate some. He shared. Really nice flavor.

So, I found a recipe for kale that looked appetizing and went to fix some. There was no more kale left. Philip had been grazing on it since I first brought it home. I went out and got some more and IMMEDIATELY got to fixing the recipe lest his kale craving kick in again.

I prepared Sweet and Savory Kale because we had most of the ingredients- olive oil, onions, garlic, dijon mustard, white sugar, cider vinegar, dried cranberries, and sliced almonds- on hand and I'd also done a sweet and sour stew before. I substituted the chicken broth for low-sodium vegetable broth and used two very small Vidalia onions instead of one small onion of unmentioned type.

Prepared Sweet and Savory Kale

Now, the original recipe says this makes six servings. Wrong! It is too delicious for such small quantities. Philip and I split the entire thing in one sitting. So, the only thing I would change about not only the original, but how I prepared it (I think the Vidalia onions were a good choice here) is to double it. That's a lot of kale. Eight cups. But, then again, those intimidating bags of kale at the grocery store are huge!

Hats Are Back...almost

2011-06-18T15:45:00.002-04:00

This post, along with the re-emergence of this particular fashion trend, is long overdue. I started this post back in October and didn't quite manage to get it done.

Nearly everyone has a story that their family members tell over and over and over, so much so that it becomes family folklore. One of my family stories involves a wheeled walker, an open front door, and a tumble down concrete steps. Rather than being injured or even upset, I was cracking up laughing.

My other story involves a hat.

My mother had a large, conical-shaped straw hat. My childhood memory tells me it was big, ridiculously big. So big that it would have contained Marge Simpson's blue coif. One day, the fam had all packed in the car and my mother had this hat. I asked to put it on. With hat on head, I inspected myself in the rear view mirror and then responded, "Nah, I don't think I'm gonna wear it. People'll think I'm a midget."

I rejected that hat, but my love for hats wasn't stemmed by that ridiculous straw hat. My dad had a fedora he'd kept around long after the Mad Men style gave way to the puffy hair and fuzzy sideburns. I'd wear that fedora with a pair of my mother's hoop earrings that were as thin as paper clips and as round as quarters. I loved the way I felt in those accessories.

But hats went out of style. Way out of style. The ridiculous straw hat disappeared entirely and the only head gear that stuck around our house were some red-haired pieces my mom had once pinned onto her own redhead. There were no hats to be found.

We left hats behind and only covered our heads for birthday parties, New Year's Eve bashes, and Mardi Gras shin digs. Our faces freckled and tanned and sunburnt, ad nauseam. Then my older family members started getting wonky little sores on their faces. Then those wonky little sores got biopsed and cut off and now, well, skin cancer is something I get to put on my medical information sheets under family medical history. And around about the time these skin cancers (for there have been several and they have affected more than one first-degree relative), I bought my very first hat.

I got it out of a Tweeds catalog. Tweeds was this clothing company that was a sort of wonderful middle ground between the ultra-preppy J. Crew and the more exotic J. Peterman, but had the distinct advantage of being very reasonably priced. I ordered me up a couple of shirts and a wide-brimmed straw hat and was determined to stave off skin cancer of the face.

Planting strawberries under shade, but still hatted. My old dog is "assisting" me.

When it came to other hats, I sometimes wore berets in college. Only sometimes. Hats of all kinds, save baseball hats, were still an anomaly. Even in the early 90s they were mostly for birthday parties and such and save for some proto-Hipsters, they simply weren't worn.

Meanwhile, more and more lesions were cut off family members' faces and still absolutely determined to nurture vs. nature my way out of a similar fate, I decided to flip off fashion and convention and endure stares and wear a sun hat whenever I could.

Finding one, of course, turned out to be a bit of a problem. My Tweeds sunhat was cute and stylish and...too big. I usually had to tie a bandanna around my head in order to have a secure fit. This makes for a hot wear. So, determined to have an extremely wide-brimmed hat that fit well, I was forced to buy something in person. The only one I managed to find was a bona fide garden hat at a bona fide hardware store sold in the bona fide gardening section.

My garden hat.

I wear this puppy whenever I'll be outside and it'll be sunny. It has adjustable leather straps that mean I can secure it on my head on windy days without worrying that it'll fly off. It also means I can slough it off my head when I go indoors, but can still keep my hands free, my garden hat riding on my back like a buddy.

My garden hat, you see, has many advantages. It also has disadvantages. See, hats aren't in style. Not really. Especially in podunk towns. I wore my beloved garden hat to the fair and some schmuck walked by and said, "Nice hat." Unfortunately, I didn't hear him (the kids did) or I would've responded with equal derision. I'm probably known in our little podunk community for this hat. It turns heads when I walk around town, probably gets talked about, and all that small town meanness that's so closely akin to chickens culling the hen not like all the other ones. Well, I've come to terms with my garden hat. I don't care what people say about it or about me for wearing it. I've seen up close the skin cancer gouges in my father's and sister's faces. I'd prefer to endure a hen pecking over a doctor slicing.

I now have more hats than I do purses, but wearing them can sometimes be interesting. I have two berets. I wear them in the winter. I was wearing one to the grocery store this past season and a little girl was walking down the aisle with her mom. I passed them and the little girl said, "Look, Mommy, a French lady."

After I got my hair chopped to donate 12 inches of hair to Locks of Love

And I was growing my hairdo back out

I took to wearing this Salvation Army find on cold days when I wanted to dress up a little more, but also keep my head warm and allow for minimal hair growing out fussing.

I really can't wear it anymore because it worked with my old thin framed, wireless-rimmed eyeglasses, but not with my chunky new ones.

Still, I wear hats...plural. I'd like to have the chutzpah to wear all of my hats in public.

Not just in private.

I hope to foster a love for hats in my daughters.

And in the next generation of girls

Hats from our tea party, mine is the white straw fedora-like one on the upper right.

They are coming back. Almost every single one of my hats is vintage, bought either in a specialty store or an antique shop. Now, however, we don't have to necessarily depend on this route to getting our hatting on. In department stores the hat sections are not just filled with red hats with purple trimmings for old ladies belonging to the Red Hat Society. Or, as was the case when I was in high school, stylish hats that only seemed to be worn by girls chosen for Homecoming Court and only for the one night of the football game. There are wide-brimmed sun hats (I don't have to go to a hardware store anymore, it seems) and cloches and berets for woman who certainly aren't the least bit French (alright, I do have some Huguenot ancestors). I swear that Alan Heathcock is on a one-man campaign to bring back hats for men.

And let's not forget the English and their weddings, most especially their royal weddings, for getting people talking about hats again and bringing the term milliner back from the dead and making Philip Treacy a household name.

Hats are back...almost and I can't wait until they are back for sure.

You might have spent the last decade and a half with a chemist if

2011-06-15T08:45:00.004-04:00

...you can instantly recognize the chemical structure of caffeine (and um...other cool compounds) even though you last had a chemistry course 18 years ago...and it was 100-level...and it was for artsy-fartsy types...

...you know the name and function of instruments you've never used such as NMR, gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, IR, vacuum pump, and glove box.

...not only can you distinguish your husband's NMR readouts from another chemist's, you can also tell when your husband's NMRs look perfect (and the reaction was a success) and when they look like crap (and something went wrong).

...not only did you not know of the existence of some elements, the rarest elements in the world- ones that are extraterrestrial in origin- are now a part of your permanent and frequently-used vocabulary.

...when your husband gets this look on his face

...you know it means he's thinking, "What cool new shit can I make from metals that come from meteors?"

Talking Shop- Fiction

2011-06-13T05:00:00.000-04:00

I made a confession in my introduction to the interview I did with Rebecca Makkai- "Though I could easily rattle off the titles of two dozen novels I love, cherish, and reread, I would struggle to name half a dozen short stories that affected me similarly. I simply don’t love the short form."

Here's a list of the five (see, I said I'd struggle to name six, and I did, I can only name five) short stories that I 1- remember by name, and 2- author, and 3- by the gist and plot of the story.

"The Conversion of the Jews" by Philip Roth
"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe
"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
"A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty

I must admit it does feel like a confession of a dirty, little secret. I have been saying mostly in private that I think many writers are more hardwired for one form of writing. Though this seems rather intuitive, I often feel that it is not the conventional wisdom in the literary world. If it were, it would be more widely talked about and discussed in very, very public ways instead of little, near-whispered confessions in 12-person writing conference workshops, one-on-one writers talking shop, on Facebook, or in private e-mails.

I have no qualms about admitting that I have struggled mightily with the short form. I always felt I wasn't wired for it at all. This, I felt, sounds like an excuse.

I have turned quite a few corners in the past year. And recently, after I turned in Rebecca's interview, I took into consideration two extremely good reads from my latest draft of a solid short story (Thanks Hank and Alan!) and got down to the business of revising it, I realized that my instinctive story-telling inclination is wrong for the short form. The way I foreshadow in novels DOES NOT WORK for short stories. The way to foreshadow in short stories DOES NOT WORK for novels. There are only narrative elements, too, that do not cross over well. I only came to this realization when it finally dawned on me that novel readers and short story readers have different expectations and in some cases, different skill sets. Understanding that, has gone a long way in helping me overcome my short story struggles.

Then, I talked shop at Rebecca about what I learned and still felt a little like I was making excuses and being douchey. Then, later on that night, I read this in Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees, "But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him." She went on to advise that writers struggling to find their genre, "...compile a list of everything you've read over the past six months or year and try to determine if there is a pattern or common denominator. If you only read literary novels, that should tell you something."

Rebecca Makkai

2011-06-10T14:44:00.004-04:00

It's Friday. I've been spending the day with the hubby and have been off the compy and only now learned the my interview with Rebecca Makkai was published by The Millions today. Her debut novel, The Borrower, is now available.

And though I know it is Fashion Friday, I don't have anything this week. Well, there is a hint of fashion in the interview...;-0

She might in Austin, but she sounds like she's straight out of SW Louisiana.

2011-06-08T06:20:00.001-04:00

A Glutton for Gluten-Free

2011-06-06T16:55:00.008-04:00

Isn't the internet grand? With a few clicks, nearly anyone can become an expert. Wanna find out exactly what an etrog is? The interweb will tell you. The interslice can help you suss out that that/those person(s) who launched a thorough, unrelenting, lie-and-distortion filled, years-on-end smear campaign probably has/have Borderline Personality Disorder. The world wide web can even help you diagnose a medical issue that the doctors don't even seem to know and/or care about. This can be the case with Celiac disease/gluten sensitivity.

With me and mine, we started to suspect something was wrong about ten years ago. Our twins had eczema. Isaac's was particularly bad, causing bumps on his face, upper arms, and booty. We switched from cow milk to soy milk as that seemed to help. We also used only oat or rice cereal for their solids. Things got better. Then Isaac got this funky sore on his leg and we took him into a bona fide, board certified dermatologist. The derm guy was convinced he knew what the sore was, but did a culture anyway. While we were waiting for the results, I asked the skin doc about Isaac's eczema and he gave me a prescription for Elidel. I noticed a poster in the exam room about Elidel that specifically stated that it wasn't to be used on children under 2. Isaac was under 2. So...I asked. The dermatologist assured me that it would be fine and I took the prescription. When the test results came back on Isaac's funky leg sore and it wasn't what the doctor had insisted it was. He sort of nonchalantly shrugged, said he didn't know what it was, gave me some samples of topical steroids, and said that it should clear up in a couple of days, but if it didn't to stop using it after two weeks as it could cause problems. We got in the car, I put the prescription for Elidel in the car's glove compartment, and went home. Well, the funky sore thing didn't clear up after a week of the topical steroids. I ended up rubbing Neutrogena intense care hand cream into it for a couple three days and it cleared up immediately. I threw the prescription for Elidel in the trash. Turns out, if you haven't heard...Elidel was flagged for potentially causing...skin cancer. My experience with the skin doc concerned me greatly. I no longer wanted to treat things, I wanted to know the cause.

Eczema, the interslice will tell ya, is also related to asthma. Philip has asthma, but it's usually confined to exercise-induced asthma. So, he, in addition to the eczema he had on his upper arms, he was also fighting asthma, but had it under control with an inhaler.

Fast forward many years. Philip started having chronic sinus infections and/or bronchitis. He did Nasonex, Flonase, Claritin, Singulair, and continued using the inhaler when he exercised, and nothing stopped the sinus infections and/or bronchitis. Of course, I had said, back when I wanted to know the cause of Isaac's eczema, that there seemed to be a link to wheat, but Philip didn't listen. It wasn't until after moving to a new, more progressive place and/or gluten-free diets becoming more trendy and popular, Philip decided to go off wheat entirely.

People are talking about these things. Doctors are not always listening. This was the case with Elisabeth Hasselbeck and her GI problems. She was diagnosed with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome (and be wary of any new medical diagnosis with word "syndrome" in it) and put on anti-anxiety meds to help with her stomach issues. I know someone who received a similar diagnosis and a prescription for Paxil. Didn't work. In fact, caused more problems.

I am going to venture out here and say that if you've ever experienced any of the following, gluten might be a problem for you:

Chronic bronchitis as a kid (Philip was notoriously sick as a child and of course, nothing was ever done to find out the cause of the problem)

Chronic and/or recurring sinus infections (doesn't matter if they're seasonal, or once a year, they're abnormal)

Issues with dairy (this seems to be an ancillary factor that is little talked about, but the person mentioned above that was "diagnosed" with IBS was never an ice cream person, always shebert, always.)

Eczema (this can be very mild or very severe with bumps (sometimes red, sometimes colorless) usually on the face, upper arms, and booty. In fact, if I have cow milk, I'll get bumps on my own tushy)

Asthma (either generalized or exercise induced)

Ravenous appetite, but never feeling full (this seems to be a result of bloating. The stomach is distended from the irritation and never feels quite full)

Constant fatigue and/or tiredness

Excessive ear wax (I know, eww, but if it's an issue...)

Facial redness (okay, this seems only to be my issue, but still)

Philip went off wheat a couple of years ago. Philip hasn't had a sinus infection/bronchitis since then. He stopped using an inhaler entirely. He went off everything but the Singulair...And he lost 30 pounds in six months.

After being off wheat for a little while, if he accidentally ate anything with wheat in it, he knew it almost immediately. He became bloated, his stomach hurt, and he felt off. He could tell if soy sauce was made with wheat within ten minutes of dipping his sushi in it. Then he investigated the interwebs and learned all about gluten sensitivity. He now eats a gluten-free diet.

I, participating and sometimes baking for my husband's necessary gluten-free diet, have noticed that when I stay away from gluten, my complexion is so much clearer. When I stray and eat wheat, my face is redder, there are more small, colorless bumps. I, too, feel bloated.

A gluten-free diet is either expensive or inconvenient. A frozen pack of six tiny little hamburger buns will run $4.50 dollars and not even completely cover a proper-sized patty of anything. The gluten-free bread is also frozen, fairly tasteless, miniature-sized, and expensive. So, now we bake gluten-free.

Baking gluten-free is a trial and error science. We, in our podunk locale and one-income family of five, have to weigh the availability and cost of ingredients. Almond flour sounds nice, but not at $12+ (more like $15, truth be told) a pound. We've come across recipes with flour and/or ingredients we've never heard of, much less seen in our three grocery store and two health food store community. Then, well, there's the taste factor and a lot of the recipes we've tried just don't taste right. They don't taste like wheat bread, we don't even care about that, but they also don't taste quite...good.

Here's a tried and true gluten-free bread recipe for a bread machine we found quite delicious. Apologies to the original creator as we've been using this for so long, I no longer have a link. I've also included possible substitutions that have worked in the past.

Liquid ingredients:

3 eggs
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup canola oil (olive oil substitute only if you're desperate)
1 1/2 cups water

Dry ingredients:

1 cup white rice flour (any combo of white rice and brown rice flour that equals 2 total cups works)
1 cup brown rice flour (any combo of white rice and brown rice flour that equals 2 total cups works)
1/2 cup potato starch (no subs.)
1/3 cup tapioca flour (no subs.)
1/3 cup cornstarch (no subs.)
1 tablespoon xanthan gum (no subs.)
3 tablespoons brown sugar (white sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt (no subs.)
2/3 cup dry milk (can leave completely out if even dry milk causes issues for you)
2 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast (no subs.)

Combine liquid ingredients. Pour into bread baking pan. (You can just put them in the pan together and not worry about messing up a different bowl). Combine all dry ingredients except yeast in mixing bowl and mix well with fork to blend. Add dry ingredients to bread pan; do not mix with liquid. Make small indentation in the top of the dry ingredients and add the yeast to this. Carefully insert bread pan into machine, select "2.0 lb." for loaf size and "light" for loaf color. Press start. Remove loaf from bread machine immediately upon completion of the baking cycle. Invert pan and drop loaf onto a rack to cool. Wait at least 10 minutes before slicing.

This is a very moist, cakey bread. We usually slice it in half and leave it to dry out overnight (put it in an unheated oven if pests are problem). We also usually slice all the pieces at once and store in a ziplock as the crust is quite flaky and you'll be cleaning up crumblies for days and days if you slice as you need.

TIPS:

As you can see, there are a lot of different flours for this recipe. What we do to keep them fresh and safe from the Indian meal moth invasion that seems to be plaguing our country, is to store the various flours in our old Folger's Aromaseal cans. Then we put them in the fridge.

Another tip to ease the inconvenience of this bread making (I can prepare a whole loaf of regular challah much faster than this gluten-free bread machine recipe because of the number and proportions of the ingredients are so vastly different) is to drag out all the ingredients, make one batch for immediate baking and then use an airtight container (again, the Folger's Aromaseal cans work perfectly for this purpose) to mix and store the dry ingredients, save the yeast. So, I mix up the white rice flour, brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, cornstarch, xanthan gum, sugar, salt, dry milk (or not), and then put it in a can and put it in the freezer. Next time we need to bake the bread, I drag the pre-mixed dry ingredients out of the freezer, let them warm up to room temp, mix up the wet ingredients and the process is much faster that way.

Gluten-free Hamburger Bun Recipe

With the great tea party tea pot search, I also conducted a simultaneous search for muffin tins. I didn't find any. Instead, I found these spring form pans at...Wal-Mart.

These are perfect for making hamburger/patty-sized buns.

After some trial and error recipe testing (it's almost always trial and error with gluten-free baked goods, so take this as par for the course), Philip found the perfect bun recipe here at gluten free homemaker.

We don't have sweet rice flour around here, so we used white rice flour. Worked fine. In fact, we recently used up all our white rice flour and Philip used all brown rice flour for the recipe. It tasted even better. To make it vegetarian, Philip substituted agar for the gelatin in the exact same proportions. Worked great! Philip also puts the spring form pans directly on the baking rack.

Here's a pic of these wonderful gluten-free buns:

Now here's a bit of an adjustment, again more trial and error. Without changing the recipe at all and using the Better Homes and Garden spring form pans from above, you can either make four gigantic Fuddrucker-worthy buns, eight slim jim ones, or the just right six that we are now using. The baking times don't change.

Funky Purses

2011-06-03T05:00:00.000-04:00

I have been planning a big, big fashion Friday post for quite a while. In fact, I started the post at the end of October, but it's a biggie and I'm finding it difficult to put it all together in a reasonable time frame. In lieu of it this week, however, I have something almost as special- funky little purses.

I'm not much of a purse person. In fact, I did without a purse for a very long time. I'd carry my wallet and the checkbook in my hand, and my keys in my pocket or hooked on my fingers. Once the twins came along, however, I needed every hand I could get and so my holding my things for funsies became out of the question. I broke down and bought a purse. I still don't like them. Most of the ones I *do* have come from the Salvation Army including a couple three from a buy-by-the-pound dumping ground in Nashville.

But a few years ago, I came across this purse at Nelda's, one of my favorite online vintage clothing sites.

I didn't spend more than $30 on it, even with shipping. It's my favorite purse and it gets comments and compliments.

Imagine my surprise when I came across this gem for $26 in a vintage clothing store recently:

These two purses are so similar that I was floored. The both had wooden bottoms, canvas coverings, a plastic inside pocket, similar handles, and closure. Yet, neither of them was marked with a name or label anywhere. Truly the only things different about these two purses were the colors and designs.

Intrigued, I investigated. Turns out that a purse maker named Enid Collins made purses as well as purse kits. My two purses are from kits and from the pictures I've found on the internet, whoever made these two purses of mine did not follow the kit exactly. The purse on the left is shown in kit pictures as having white leather trimmings. My butterfly purse is shown in kit pictures and here as being on a white canvas purse with white leather trimmings. So not only are these purses funky, but they are also uniquely unique because someone- likely back decades ago before I was even born- played around with the materials and turned out two purses that look better than their straight-out-of-the-kit counterparts.

The Lost Art of Diagramming

2011-06-01T06:51:00.005-04:00

Back when I was planning homeschool curriculum- picking and choosing novels for the kids to read and study, contemplating science textbooks, and all that- Philip was insistent about only one thing. "They should learn how to diagram," he'd said. He insisted his writing skills came, in part, from a militant third grade teacher who drilled them in all subjects including the diagramming of sentences.

I looked high and low for curriculum that just covered diagramming- a book or workbook or something that didn't lump all grammar together. The only thing I managed to find was Eugene R. Moutoux's Drawing Sentences: A Guide to Diagramming.

It was very slow going for a very long time. I had to channel the likely long dead third grade teacher my husband once had and drill like a drill sergeant. "What part of speech is this word?" "What is the function of this word in this sentence?" "How do I diagram this word?"

They didn't get it for a long time. Then I wrote a six or seven word sentence on our dry erase board. We diagrammed it. Then I used the same exact six or seven words in a different order. Then we diagrammed that sentence. Then they each used the same exact six or seven words in three more ways. Then we diagrammed those three sentences. Depending on the sentence, the individual words could take on different parts of speech and definitely served different purposes in the different sentences. They seemed to finally get it.

When we put them back in public school and planned to coschool, I was worried about how much of their diagramming skills they would lose during the transition time. Once we started back to diagramming, they hadn't done it since mid-March and a full two months had passed. I thought for sure we'd have to spend at least a week, maybe two, reviewing.

What the hell, I thought, I'll just continue on to the next lesson and see what happens. We started the next lesson. They have subject, verb, articles, and adjectives down pat. I expected them to be a little rusty on adverbs, have trouble with prepositional phrases, and completely forget about predicate adjectives, predicate nominatives, and direct objects. I should note, Moutoux's book is a lot like the Saxon curriculum. It builds upon itself and regularly reinforces already introduced concepts. Still, I didn't have much hope that the kids would have retained much of the more subtle nuances and complexities of diagramming after two months.

I was pleasantly surprised. We had the sentence, "Natasha, read the first paragraph." Isaac immediately remembered that in commands, there is no subject, so we put an x on the line for the subject. Shoshana knew the verb was read and so we put that on the line. Then I asked what the word paragraph was doing in the sentence. There were some thoughtful looks and then a light came on in Samara's head and her face beamed. "It's the direct object!" she exclaimed. "How do you know it's the direct object?" I prodded. "What is being read?" she asked. "The paragraph is what's being read. Since the paragraph is receiving the action of the verb, it's the direct object!"

Finally, all my poking and prodding and leading questions and repetition of concepts has finally paid off. It might be a lost art, but it's a worthy art.

Color Trends

2011-05-27T11:17:00.002-04:00

The first time I ever noticed a color trend I was all of 12 years old. Prince's single "Raspberry Beret" was a hit and there was this desperate search for magenta-colored berets. I don't know that anyone was able to find one, but the curiosity of "second-hand stores" was piqued and the raspberry color showed in other clothing items around my podunk hometown.

An aside- Damn, I miss the storytelling quality of old songs. Bring back the narrative!

The problem, of course, with color trends is that not everyone is blessed with the sort of complexion that suits all colors of the rainbow. I was so SOL for that whole turquoise trend (my older daughter, however, has the coloring to pull it off). The only thing I think that's worse than following a fashion color trend that doesn't suit you is not wearing any "color" at all. I don't care how fashionable, designer, expensive, well-made, etc. something is wearing only neutrals- white, black, grey, khaki, etc.- is BORING!

Anywho, I have been hungering for something mustard-colored for a while. A year, maybe more. That deep mustard color isn't a staple and so it's hard to find in the second hand stores where I shop. I love yellow. I once had a yellow house and most of the walls of my first floor of my current abode are yellow, but its a color that I can't wear. The darker, deeper mustard, however, is.

I've been jonesing for a mustard-colored skirt, but I have yet to find this color in any shape or form at the Sal Val. But then, I did. In the great tea party planning, Samara and I hit not one, not two, not even three or four, not even five or six, but SEVEN stores looking for a ceramic teapot. It was the eighth and final store- the favored Sal Val- where I found one and some mustard-colored clothing items.

Alas, no skirts. Only a nice top and a really wonderful jacket that made me inhale at the sight of it. I tried both on and they looked to be winners. The jacket had a nice cut, the sleeves had a long cuff that came just below my wrists and I was ready to take home both until I actually tried to button up the jacket. No going there...it was too tight. In any case, I brought home the top, it being more of a country dijon Grey Poupon mustard color.

My Sal Val find with the skirt I got in Portland with Judy.

Different lighting, better focus.

Then, I got a bit worried that my mustard obsession was out of date. Not that it really matters where I live, but still, the little teenager in me worried about being called out for wearing last year's Esprit...

Then, just a couple three days later, my impulse buy of yet another issue of InStyle magazine surprised me.

They are calling it "marigold", but same difference.

And because I've been bogged down with words and need the visual stimulation that can relieve it, I went "browser shopping". If I had more money, I'd probably pick up a couple three mustard/marigold skirts from Anthropologie. Alright, maybe five or six ;-0

Goldfish Bowl Skirt

Sun-Stitched Skirt

Golden Rays Skirt

Sugar-Work Skirt

San Pedro Pencil Skirt (which, Ha!, also comes in turquoise!)

Another aside, I know it's a recession and all, but the maxi skirts...pulease! I no likey! I'm already borderline petite, leg long and torso short, why would I subject myself to this look (which would be prairie-ish or matronly on me). Ah, fashion trends!

Napa Tuna Salad

2011-05-23T11:25:00.003-04:00

Philip and I are addicted to Napa Tuna Salad. We're big canned tuna fans in general, but wanting a little something more, we became Napa Tuna Salad fiends. We eat it at least once a week, but usually twice.

The recipe is simple and easy to expand serving sizes.

For every one can of tuna add:

1/4 cup chopped celery (we prefer chunky celery pieces)
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1/4 cup chopped red grapes (again, we prefer the chunky)
And then enough mayonnaise to make it tuna salady

I usually eat mine with my homemade corn chips, but recently Philip made some gluten-free buns and that made a very nice and filling meal.

Friday Fashion- Bonus

2011-05-20T14:25:00.002-04:00

As a bonus and seemingly to coincide with the predicted end of the world tomorrow, Princess Beatrice's provocative royal wedding hat is up for auction and is currently at over 55,000 pounds!

Friday Fashion- DIVAtion

2011-05-20T06:45:00.007-04:00

divation- (n) the active practice of living like a diva; the lifestyle and career choices made by a diva.

I've said this before, but my youngest child wants to be a diva. No, she didn't know what a diva was, but when she started stating what she wanted to be when she grew up, the only thing that would fit the description was diva. Now, my definition of diva is probably a bit different than some folks. I think of Beyonce as a diva and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen as divas. A diva, to me, is a woman who has so "branded" herself as to make an empire.

Shoshana, as I've said before, was singing before she could talk. She's gradually added to her diva-in-the-making skills by writing songs (both lyrics and music), writing stories and novels (usually, though entire series of novels), "designing" clothes, wanting to take more dance classes, and making up her own perfume. To boot, she has the sort of raw, unabashed humor and charisma that has earned her the nickname Shoshana "Sarah Silverman"...

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a diva, reaching a level of celebrity and wealth that allows for expansion into other areas of public celebrity culture like clothing and perfume lines. That is, except for Gwyneth Paltrow...

I had a post almost all set to go for today's Friday Fashion, but it was preempted when I came across, "Gwyneth Paltrow recommends an $18,000 spring wardrobe." For this 18 G, Gwyneth has put together the total of only six looks, and three of these reuse a "key" piece from her suggestions. To see all six looks, go to Gwyneth's lifestyle blog- Goop. The $18,000 "Spring Basics" are found there.

Of course, Paltrow's key spring pieces have resulted in a backlash that she's out of touch, but I think the issue is deeper. She also wrote a cookbook and was criticized for a common sense solution to not have pantry and fridge staples around. For instance, she suggests substituting cow milk for non-animal-based milks. Really? That soooooo wouldn't have occurred to me. Also, like her wardrobe suggestions, her cookbook outprices most all readers. "By a conservative estimate, it would take a cooking novice $450 and five days' shipping time to acquire the "essential" ingredients of Gwyneth Paltrow's pantry," writes The Atlantic. "It would cost an additional $1300 to upgrade a standard kitchen to one with all her 'essential tools,' such as earthenware bowls, butcher block countertops, Global knives, a Vitamix blender, and a Le Creuset Dutch oven. That's before you get anywhere near the organic duck."

Paltrow possesses a quality that gives me the creeps. I don't know that we want our Oscar-award winning actresses to brand themselves in such a way and to do so with such a high degree of cluelessness regarding what most everyone can and cannot afford. It's the Oscar I get caught up on, truth be told. I liken it to a Pulitzer-Prize winning author chucking most of his or her craft in order to write commercials. Or a Nobel-Prize winning chemist getting out of the research lab to go make Meth in backwater America.

This, to me, isn't even divation...it's beyond branding and beyond $18,000 six-look spring wardrobes. It's bizarre.

Bread Pudding

2011-05-17T05:00:00.002-04:00

When you use tulip and flower-shaped cookie cutters to make copious amounts of tea sandwiches, what do you do with the crusts? Or, I suppose, if you have uber-picky little eaters who won't eat bread crusts (which, thank God, I don't have) do ya just chuck the crusts?

No!

Make bread pudding.

I've never made bread pudding before, but I had all these bread crusts leftover from the royal wedding tea party, so I got a-makin' some.

I modified a recipe (of course) reducing the sugar (as I always tend to do) and upping the spices (again, a habit of mine) and here's what I came up with:

4 cups of bread crusts roughly cubed (or you could use actual bread and no crusts)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 medium-sized Bosc pear peeled and cubed
1 small sweet apple (such as Gala or Fuji) peeled and cube
* The pear and apple combined should equal one cup, so whatever size of your fruit, this will be the ratio
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 3/4 cup milk (also leftover from our tea party)
1/4 cup butter (another tea party leftover, but can use margarine)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten

Put your oven on 350 degrees Fahrenheit and grease an 8 X 11 glass casserole dish with butter or margarine.

Combine bread crusts, raisins, cranberries, pear, and apple in a bowl.

In a pan, mix brown sugar, milk, and butter and heat and stir until butter is melted. Be careful that it does not come to a hard boil and curdle the milk.

Pour milk mixture over bread mixture and spread out into casserole dish.

Whisk together the beaten eggs with the cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.

Pour over bread and milk mixture all ready in its baking dish.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Finished bread pudding

This ended up tasting like a fruity cinnamon roll, but without the guilt of too much sugar and goo. I nice dessert and a perfect breakfast. Enjoy!

Tea Party

2011-05-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

So, if you haven't guess already, we had a tea party at our house. It was almost spur of the moment. The royal wedding was approaching and I remembered almost 30 years ago being at a friend's house and we asked for her mother to wake us up really, really early so we could watch Prince Charles marry Princess Diana.

Well, thirty years is a long time and the fact that I was 8 when Charles and Di tied the knot and Shoshana is/was 8 when Will and Kate said their "I dos" wasn't lost on me. Besides, at 10, Samara's still not quite grown up enough to think it lame. So, we decided to throw a tea party as a nice little event that only comes around once a generation.

I looked high and low for a good menu format, made some decisions about our own food choices, and wrote up some invites, and the girls handed them out to ten girls. Ten, I know, being a large number, but I figured we'd have a lot of nos with the short notice (only three days in some cases). The girls had five guests and in total, all eight of us had a fine time.

This is how our invitations read:

Thirty years ago— when our mothers were girls— the future King of England married a princess. Now their son is marrying, a once in a generation event. To celebrate this occasion and just for the fun of it, we’re having a traditional English Afternoon Tea Party.

Menu

Three Types of Tea Sandwiches

Scones with Strawberry Jam

Five Types of Sweets

Madeleine and other Cookies

Maids-of-Honor Tortes

Mini Strawberry Cheesecakes

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Three Types of Tea

Earl Grey (decaffeinated)

Cinnamon Apple Spice

Gingerbread Spice

Dress

Fancy Spring Dress (Easter Best)

Hats Strongly Encouraged

We had someone with a strawberry allergy, so we had to modify our mini cheesecake recipes a bit to accommodate, and the cinnamon apple spice tea was the preference of everyone and three pots of it and two hours later, we had seven very happy girls. This may become an annual event...

Tea Sandwiches

Scones

Maids of Honor Tortes

Mini Cheesecakes with Apricot Preserves

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

All the hats!!!

Maids of Honor and Pineapple Upside Down Cake

2011-05-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, I made some Maids of Honor. These are little baked tortes. I cheated and used a frozen puff pastry.

I got them out of an entertaining book I've had for ages- maybe as long back as college or high school. Now, of course, it's missing as some of Samara's favorite reading includes cookbooks. In any case, Maids of Honor consists of puff pastry, light sour cream, some sugar, some lemon, and maybe an egg.

They came out surprisingly delicious.

Maids of Honor Tortes

From this same recipe book, I got one for pineapple upside down cake. This time Isaac helped me. These recipes were a bit off, I should say, and for the cake it was very dry and I ended up adding some pineapple juice from the can of pineapple rings the recipe required. After that, it came out okey-dokey.

The pineapple upside down cake with the previously made chocolate-covered strawberries. Samara's hand is on the left. Doesn't she have nice hands?

Overall, the recipes turned out well with some minor modifications.

Tea Sandwiches

2011-05-09T17:50:00.002-04:00

I've never had "tea sandwiches" so, in order to make them, I had to scour the interslice for some recipes. I found several, but settled on three and eventually only made two. They are cucumber tea sandwiches and pear and stilton tea sandwiches.

For the cucumber sandwiches, I, of course, had to change the recipe to suit me.

I used:

8 tablespoons of unsalted sweet cream butter
8 tablespoons of cream cheese (brought to room temperature)
1 large cucumber sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
24 pieces of white bread

Mix the butter and cream cheese together.
Cut bread into desired shape (we used a tulip-shaped cookie cutter)
Spread butter and cream cheese mix on both sides of bread
Put cucumber slice between and press (turns out the bread was so small, it only accomodated one good slice)

For the Pear and Stilton Tea Sandwiches, we used a recipe from Food.com, but cut out the shallots/onions.

We cut the bread for these sandwiches into the shape of daisies/flowers.

Voila!

Handicap Hummer

2011-05-07T07:36:00.004-04:00

A while back, we were visiting the grocery store and passed this in the parking lot.

This was, of course, laughable and absurd on several levels. Firstly, that folks still have Hummers and SUVs and gas-guzzling anythings...One of the first things I noticed in the San Francisco area was that there simply were no big cars and certainly no SUVs. My friend Sarah said that when gas prices spiked a few years back, people got rid of them. Apparently, these Bay Area cast offs have penetrated the heartland or they simply have more sense out there as here, no one got rid of any gas guzzlers. Here, gas has not once broken the $4 a gallon mark. It's currently at $3.99 for the cheap stuff, so we're so very, very close. Maybe if it goes over, people will change...though I doubt it.

Secondly, the running board to get in this monstrosity is a good 18+ inches off the ground. As I passed it, I even thought that I'd be hesitant to get in and out of this thing while pregnant. So, what sort of handicapped person needs a tag to be able to park closer- the ADA premise and subsequent concession that there might be mobility issues- but can haul him or herself out of such a high perch without problems?

A Book List

2011-05-06T19:26:00.004-04:00

I recently ran across a list of books I read in an old notebook. I'm thinking it consists of the books I read in 2008-2009 as there's some reference in the various notebook pages to the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, which I attended in the summer of '09.

Here's the list:

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Austenland by Shannon Hale
Postcards by Annie Proulx
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Homeland by Sam Lipsyte
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Black White Jewish by Rebecca Walker
Paradise by Toni Morrison
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Painted Veil by M. Somerset Maugham
Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Girl from the Fiction Department
That Night by Alice McDermott
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott

I should probably take some time to put these into Goodreads...

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

2011-05-05T07:27:00.003-04:00

In addition to mini-cheesecakes, we also recently made chocolate-covered strawberries. Though there's not really a recipe for this, there's a bit of a technique involved.

We melted the chocolate in the microwave as it affords the best chance to avoid scorching and all that. Also, when didn't get enough strawberries covered before the chocolate started getting tacky again, we were able to re-nuke the chocolate and continue on.

Additionally, we wanted pretty chocolate-covered strawberries like the super expensive ones you can buy, so we skewered the berries with bamboo skewers.

Then we spooned melted chocolate on the strawberries in a drizzle sort of fashion.

Then we propped them up around the lid of a very large bowl, weighing down the other end of the bamboo sticks with something so the heavy strawberries wouldn't tump over. Once the chocolate had solidified, we stored them in a parchment-lined box in the fridge. The day we needed them, we took them out and let them warm up to room temperature as they are best that way. We served them on a polished silver server lined with paper doilies.

On the Menu- Mini Cheesecakes

2011-05-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

I recently made two dozen mini cheesecakes. I've made regular cheesecake before and like a roast Thanksgiving turkey, this food item seems to have a mystique about it that renders some folks in awe. Not no bake cheesecake, mind you, but the bona fide baked kind. Why this produces awe, I dunno know. I just know that the elementary school where I taught would have a monthly "all day graze" in which our school secretary who moonlighted as a superb cake baker and decorator, would make a cake and the rest of us would bring treats. It'd get set up in the teachers' lounge for the day and you could come and go and get as much as you want as many times as you want until it was gone. Once I made and then brought a cheesecake and it was a big f'ing deal to some.

I have always used the pre-made graham cracker pie crusts, though. I've insisted on the necessity of handmade vegetable shortening pie crusts for other types of pies, but for cheesecake, the PITA factor of handmade graham cracker crusts just did me in. With mini cheesecakes, however, there isn't pre-made anything, so I had to make the crusts myself.

So, I took one packet (out of three) of a 14 oz. box of graham crackers, put 'em in a ziplock bag, and rolled over 'em with the rolling pin to crush the crackers into crumbs.

Not quite all the way crushed, but on the way

Then, I added two tablespoons of melted unsalted sweet cream butter to the crumbs and mixed it up.

I lined a mini cupcake pan with mini cupcake papers (one recipe said to use foil, but paper worked fine) and then spooned some of the crumb and butter mixture into each. I filled them about a third of the way up. Then I pressed the mixture to the bottom to compact it.

For the cheesecake, I let a whole 8 oz. package come to room temperature, added an egg, three tablespoons of refined sugar (because I prefer my cheesecake to taste more Southern than New York), and a good two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Then mixed it up with an electric beater on medium high until the lumps were about the size of peppercorn. I've found you'll never get all the lumps out, but it is cheese and it will bake, so the small lumps will melt and mix together in the oven and come out lumpless.

I then spooned this mixture into the mini cups until it was about 3/4 full. I baked these at 325 degrees F for 25 minutes, pulled them out of the oven, let them cool there for about 10 minutes, and then stuck the whole kit and kaboodle in the fridge.

Once they cooled, and it was clear the bottoms weren't burnt by using paper cup cake liners, I got help from my resident child labor chef, Samara, who helped me make the third and fourth dozen. Once all the mini cheesecakes were done, Samara and Shoshana dabbed each with various preserves- strawberry, blackberry, apricot, and red raspberry. Then, we peeled off the paper and had individual, finger-food sized mini cheesecakes...48 of 'em.

So, here's the break down of the recipe as I did have leftover crumbs from the package after the first two dozen:

CRUST

1/3 of a 14 oz. box of graham crackers
2 tablespoons melted unsalted sweet cream butter

Mix together and press with thumbs into paper-lined mini cupcake pans

FILLING

2 8 oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 large eggs
6 tablespoons refined sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix on with an electric beater on medium-high until lumps are small
Spoon into cups
Bake at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes
Cool
Dab with fruit preserves of choice

ENJOY!

Friday Fashion Post-Hiatus

2011-04-28T16:51:00.007-04:00

Obviously, I haven't posted much about fashion. I think winter really does me in as far as clothing and being stylish and all that jazz. I want to wear sweats and not much else. It's an effort to put on anything else and I find even then, I go back to a pair of boot cut jeans I got at the Salvation Army and have put mucho mucho wear into. They, however, don't look that way, so I keep wearing them.

The first reason for my winter schlumpiness is my winter padding. Metabolically, I put on some weight every fall and winter and no, it's not holiday overeating. I just have an increased appetite. I think so many women are taught to fight this natural process, but anyone who's ever had a pet who spends even the least bit of time outside knows that they, too, will gain weight every fall and winter and lose it every spring and summer. Why should we- as mammals, too- be different? Well, we're probably not. I know others who have little to no appetite when it's hot. I'm not a complete freak. However, I haven't bought pants with my winter padding in mind. Sooooo, when the colder weather and extra tonnage come around, my pants are uncomfortably snug. Something to keep in mind in my future purchases.

Secondly, I can't abide my winter footwear. I mean, what I am supposed to wear when there's snow on the ground, or slush, or flash flooding rains, and I want my feet to remain dry AND warm? There may be hope in a diversified Doc Marten line and I can vouch for the non-slippage of the sole (at least the original UK lined sole, not the American version).

Lastly, despite my having bought a beautiful purple double-breasted light coat, my winter coat was, well, old. I remember buying it in College Station, Texas BEFORE I was pregnant with the twins. I remember that it saw me through a few hugely pregnant, uncharacteristically cold Aggieland winter days before they were born. It's held up well, been to Germany and back and been my winter staple in PA for four seasons now. But the 3/4 length, black wool single breast was at least a dozen years old. That was a rather sobering thought and I figured a nice, new coat wouldn't be so bad. So, I headed to the...mall. Yes, the mall when I've had so many shopping misadventures in malls. However, the economy's in the shitter and the malls are suffering the worst of the retail fail. So, I got me a new coat, 60% off and it ended up being less (not even taking into account inflation) than what I paid for my old tried and true black winter coat.

So, Friday Fashion will begin again now that I can break out my other clothing choices. However, I make no promises to post religiously. I'll try, but that's it. ;-0

Writing Right Now

2011-04-27T06:17:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since I wrote about writing.

I've found that the more I do write, the less I want to write about writing. Perhaps it's the stage of my "career" that I've reached, but there it is.

I have several projects underway and yes, I think using the word projects is a little bit douchey, but as these activities are varied and don't fall under nice little categories like novels or essays or short stories, but are all still quite literary, projects will have to do.

Beginning Coschool

2011-04-26T19:17:00.003-04:00

The kids have transitioned completely back into their local public school and I have met with all their classroom teachers. We have also started "coschool".

Knowing that they won't get what they got at home at school- they literally only have/use two textbooks (one for math and a loathesome Scott Foresman Social Studies one (we used it for our brief cyberschool stint and it was one of the worst textbooks I have ever seen and it didn't get better with 4th grade...))- we are trying to meld the best aspects of both places in one day. As Philip is in typical end of the semester crunch, it falls on me to start things off.

We left off homeschool reading the children's adaptation of The Aeneid- In Search of a Homeland- and eight chapters of a middle school textbook on the ancient Romans. We aren't entirely focused on the Romans, but rather the cultures and peoples they conquered. So now we're reading Masada: The Last Fortress by Gloria D. Miklowitz about the Jews who holed up in the fortress after Jerusalem fell.

Lots of interesting stuff to do with this. In the first chapter, we converted cubits (about 18 inches) into feet. In the second chapter, we completed an art project of how the Roman army marches. Quite an extensive assembly and if Miklowitz's work is accurate, it's rather humbling to think that the troops that marched on Masada stretched out for three miles.

More to come and it's great to see the kids interested in "home"school again. After our first two chapters of Masada, I walked into the kitchen the next morning to see them all reading non-fiction books about ancient Rome while they ate their breakfasts. ;-0

Every Now and Then Epicure

2011-04-26T18:06:00.003-04:00

I am going to be ramping up my posts on recipes and food.

Since MOST of the random hits I get for my blog are for recipes and food, I've started a new tag line. If you come here mostly for the food, well, click on this heading. I'm calling it "Every Now and Then Epicure". Every now and then is a Southern/country phrase to mean sometimes and epicure is one of those snotty words that I know and use. Seems an apt name for me and a food blog by me. I didn't choose Everyday Epicurean, of course. One, because the name has long been taken and two, who the hell has the time to be gourmet everyday? Not me.

Why food?

I thought maybe I was a wannabe foodie. The Oxford American Dictionary on my MacBook defines foodie as "a person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet." Why then, I wondered, do some people consider themselves foodies and not gourmet or gourmands... and so I investigated further.

Apparently, a foodie has that sort of snobbish upper middle class/upper class connotation that speaks of way too much fucking time on one's hands- "Gourmets simply want to eat the best food, whereas foodies want to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food."

Oy, vey!

My culinary tastes have been evolving, indeed refining for quite a while. I do believe that growing up in Southwest Louisiana with Cajun and Creole cuisine brought me to a different level of eating as a child, but here in podunk Pennsylvania...

I've said it before and I'll say it again- Philip and I can cook better than most anything we can get at a restaurant most anywhere nearby. In fact, we'd have to haul a good ways away to eat about equally well. What with gasoline prices being what they are...we'll stay at home.

We are growing more of our own food than ever before. Our community garden plot and in our yard. I've planted some things that will tolerate shade as once the leaves get going on our trees, most of our yard is shaded most of the day. So far, we have arugula, peas, and lettuce coming up. I have planted other cool season veggies such as kohlrabi and beets as our last frost date is still over two weeks away. I hope to put in some red and white radishes, parsnips, fennel, zucchini, yellow crook neck, regular green cucumber and this cool looking heirloom cucumber called lemon. That's just for starters.

Stay posted for a very interesting development next week!

On the Menu- Homemade Corn Chips

2011-04-26T09:50:00.004-04:00

Well, the kids' recent school break threw me off. Though I knew it was Monday as the banks were open, the mail came, etc., it didn't register all the way so this week's menu is late...and not much as far as adventurous or interesting cooking.

In any case, we've taken to making our own tortilla chips mainly because we can't abide by the amount of salt on store bought ones. In fact, I can't even find salt free ones without having mortgage something to pay for them. So, homemade it is.

I set the oven to bake at 350 degrees F and then take out my plain all corn tortillas.

I cut them into wedges using a pizza cutter.

I arranged them on a cookie sheet ("seasoned" as you can see) and spray both sides with non-stick cooking spray (this has minimal fat, in fact it's so small it doesn't need reporting). Here is where you add whatever you want. I've done salt, sugar and cinnamon; Philip has added chili powder, etc.

I bake them for about 12 minutes. I should note that Philip likes smaller wedges and I prefer larger ones. The 12 minutes is perfect for the larger ones, but might overbake/brown the smaller ones.

They will come out sizzling and chewy, but if you let them cool, they'll crunch up real nice!

On the Menu- Tangy Winter Squash Stew

2011-04-18T05:00:00.001-04:00

I did not grow up in a "cooking" household. I think that if it weren't for Haagen Daz Coffee ice cream, frozen beef and bean burritos, Little Caesar's Pizza, and Hardee's, I never would have developed hips.

Before I went to college, however, I had the notion that I wanted to cook and so I bought a couple three cookbooks before I left. The first time I ever cooked with someone else was in the basement of my dorm room where there was a tall-ceilinged kitchen that pretty much no one used. The recipe was some sort of tomato-based something or other and we followed the recipe EXACTLY for my cooking partner was from South Dakota (and the midwest in general is the land of the casserole) and was, at the time, a Physics major. She took to the recipe like a novice scientist takes to a lab procedure- with unfailing attention to the directions. After we completed the recipe EXACTLY as it said to, I found it too bland. My friend, of course, did not. For some reason I really, really wanted to put a few dashes of Tabasco in the sauce. That I had Tabasco itself strikes me as interesting. It wasn't uncommon for folks from south Louisiana to travel with Tabasco, taking a little green-capped hot sauce bottle with them whenever they left the motherland. Though I didn't think of myself as such a person, there I was in Kirksville, Missouri with a bottle of Tabasco. My friend, of course, was against spicing the sauce and I convinced her to add a couple drops. I retasted and it wasn't enough. There was no little to no change in the blandness. So I overturned the Tabasco bottle on the sauce and vigorously shook it until my friend restrained me. Mind you, Tabasco bottles are made like all hot sauce bottles, you can't ever pour the stuff out; it only comes out in drips.

She was mad, I had not only ruined it by straying from the recipe, but had made it too spicy for anyone to enjoy it. To me, of course, it had just the right amount of heat and was no longer bland. Nearly 20 years later, she is a Food Chemist and I have written a novel about a chef...

My point in all of that is that cooking isn't baking. You have liberties with cooking that cannot chemically pulled off with the baking process.

Such was the case of a recipe I tried this week.

Every year (every being two in a row), I buy a pumpkin after Halloween. These puppies go on sale and you can get one for $2. The amount of flesh from one good-sized pumpkin is amazing. This year, we got gallons of pumpkin. So, I decided to use it in this recipe that I got out of a book.

But the cookbook's recipe didn't seem right to me. There were some things that struck me as odd ingredients and just from a read, it sounded a bit too dry for a stew. So I gleaned the gist of it and went from there, adding and subtracting based on what I thought would go well together. So without further rambling:

Tangy Winter Squash Stew

cooking oil
1/2 cup chopped shallots (can substitute onions, duh, but wangy ones like red onions)
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 14-oz can of stewed tomatoes, be sure to chop these up to bite-sized chunks (this is what we had in our pantry, but you can use diced)
1 cup apple juice (or apple cider, it's spring so there's none to be had)
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
4 cups cubed winter squash (I used pumpkin, but any orange-fleshed winter squash will do)
2 medium sweet potatoes (peel 'em, cut them up into bit-sized pieces (I like to first cut them into 1/2 to 3/4 inch discs and then further cut into quarters, sixths, or eighths depending on the diameter of each individual disc))
1 large (or two medium) Granny Smith apples, cored, but not peeled, and cut into chunks about the size of the winter squash and sweet potatoes
1 32-oz. box of Swanson's certified organic vegetable broth (I should note I am really sickened by the amount of sodium in processed broths and now that I have more time, I would like to make and freeze my own. However, this is what I could do with what I had at the time.)

Saute shallots and garlic over medium heat in oiled pot until softened.

Add tomatoes, juice (or cider), bay leaf, nutmeg, winter squash and sweet potatoes. Heat to boiling, then cover, reduce heat and simmer until veggies are tender. This took me 20 minutes as it was the sweet potatoes that stayed crunchy and I had already cooked the pumpkin from last November and just put four cups of frozen chunks in the pot. Once the veggies are tender, add apples and broth and cook until apples are tender. Since I used a high sodium vegetable broth, I didn't find the recipe needed any seasoning. However, if you go with a homemade or lower-sodium broth, it might require some salt.

I'm not a fan of leftovers, but this was so good I ate it twice a day until it was gone. It makes about 10-12 1-cup servings and was hearty without being heavy. Enjoy!

Transitioning

2011-04-04T05:58:00.003-04:00

This week I am transitioning back into mostly full-time work. I probably should say "work" as reading and writing and conducting publication "business" is just the sort of job that would be mock-worthy in many circles.

I don't know how well it will go for several reasons. One, it's been a while since I have had all day several days in a row entirely to myself. About a year and a half. Two, I have had some gastro-intestinal issues of late. Mind you, they haven't been of the full-on vomiting kind that seems to be plaguing the local community, but I have chugged from the lip of a Pepto bottle more than once in the past week. Three, I have many literary plates spinning and I don't know at this point in the day- 6:00 AM, a full 2 1/2 hours before my kids are off to school- which one I will pull off its perch and work on.

Still, it's nice to see the day stretched out with a list of want to dos and not have to dos.

Homeschool Fail

2011-03-24T05:31:00.004-04:00

If you would have told me a month ago, or even a week ago for that matter, that we wouldn't be homeschooling anymore, I soooo wouldn't have believed you. Not for a second. I would have been as incredulous as I was about homeschooling in the first place.

Things were going extremely well. We had a nice schedule, a working rhythm, and we were prepared. Not just for next week's lessons, but all the way for the whole of next year. I had planned out what we'd read for our novel units, Philip and I mulled over middle school mathematics textbooks since they will finish the 5th grade math soon, we had Holt Science and Technology Life Science and Physical Science to go through, finish off Saxon Grammar and Writing 6th grade level and work on 7th, a whole set of Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop books to go through, more involved Spanish and diagramming, and I had a list of social studies books to buy.

The kids were getting their work done, getting good grades, had ample free time to explore movie making and playing and all things Lego.

So what happened?

Remember that growth spurt we've had recently? That was our first sign and since it began the...um...nature of our children has changed. One moment they are their usual sweet selves approaching for hugs, saying sweet things and then the next they either make snarky replies to Philip and me or they ignore us altogether. Houston, we have a problem. There are adolescents in the house and we are outnumbered.

When I began substitute teaching back long ago in the stone age, I began to get a feel for areas I might want to teach in. I would take a job at one of the three middle schools where we lived at the time...but I hated it. I most especially hated it of after a girl in one class began to threaten me in class. The whole class told her to shut up not out of any sense of respect for authority or right or wrong, but because if I buzzed the office on account of her behavior, it would be her last straw- she would go to Juvenile Detention. She kept it up and I buzzed and to this day I remember that girl's name, though I knew her only a brief, but intense few minutes. I remember her name when I have forgotten some children's names I had taught day in and day out for years.... All of that said, I have always, always, always believed that it took a special type of person to teach middle school, a sort of rarefied individual that understood, enjoyed, and loved that early adolescent age group. I also knew that I was soooooooooo not that person.

Now we have adolescents in our own house. They are trying our patience. And maybe it would have been fine, but then I sought advice and had someone with far more experience with homeschooling and adolescents tell me point blank some interesting things- What we're dealing with "typically hits between (as young as) 5^th grade and 9^th grade, with the bulk of attitudes and issues in the middle school years," "their hormones are starting to jump all over the place and they have a real need to be with peers," "they have a real need to be around other children and just change up the routine," and "what I've found is children need more attention to the social aspects of their life, not the academics."

She suggested groups, but we live in an odd little world where the homeschoolers/cyberschoolers are either 1- extremely religious (Christians) and thus keep to themselves and to those that have the same beliefs or 2- as tapped as Philip and I are with our free time, getting the kids together with other kids en masse is a feat, a feat that neither of us has the time or energy to accomplish. Besides, I'd rather the kids chose their own friends...

So, we're really looking at the lesser of two evils and Philip and I made the decision that though they are all two grade levels ahead in most every subject (Shoshana being three grade levels ahead), that while we can fulfill their academic needs better than any place around, we cannot take care of their new and rapidly changing social needs...at all.

So...back to school they go. And...they are actually excited about it. We are going to keep up the academics at home and possibly (if possible) at school in a "co-school" sort of fashion.

Growth Spurts

2011-03-17T07:02:00.004-04:00

There's been a lot going on in the world and at home lately. I don't want to be any more doom and gloom than I have to be, so I thought I'd write about something a little lighter, or rather heavier if ya wanna get literal about it.

My children's growth spurts have been a bit of a bane in my life for the past decade. There was a time, as a new mother of twins, that I felt like I had things more or less down pat. I was pumping breastmilk for both babies, but was able to put about two pints of extra milk in the freezer a week. Then Isaac and Samara turned four months old and all that stored milk was gone within two weeks and we had to start supplementing with formula.

Since then, their growth spurts have been...interesting. They always seem to take me by surprise. There have been times when I would spend two solid weeks doing not much more than cooking and cleaning up from the cooking. That activity, the mere tasking of keeping up with their appetites often so consumed me that I wasn't always fully aware of their eating habits, the sleepiness and irritability that come with a growth spurt, and the need to fix copious amounts of extra food. Myself exhausted by the act of feeding them, I'd often not notice that they were out of the growth spurt and I often ended up fixing more food than they ate. This has been the case since the twins started eating solid foods. So, nearly, but not quite, a decade. Add to that our BFB (Big Fat Baby- Shoshana born at 9 lbs. 15 oz.) who joined the family 15 months after Isaac and Samara were born and growth spurts were always...fun.

I could never determine which was worse, when all three of their growth spurts coincided or when they were back to back to back. Either the three of them never had growth spurts that were spread out from each other or I didn't notice such things.

That was then, this is now. We now have had sustained growth spurts. It's been bad. We usually go to the grocery store on Sunday mornings, but a few weeks ago we were out of food by Friday night. So I went to the store on Saturday morning and bought more. We're usually a two loaf of a bread a week family. I bought three loaves. They usually eat six pounds of apples a week. I bought nine. We've got a growing boy in the family, so I bought some all beef kosher hot dogs. We're usually a two can of black beans a week family. I bought four. We usually eat six cans of tuna a week. I bought ten. We go through three gallons of soy milk a week. I bought four gallons. Even with this increased stock pile, a day earlier than usual, I had to return to the grocery store not on our usual Sunday, not even on our unusual Saturday, but on Friday morning. I further stockpiled- four loaves of bread, 15 pounds of apples, and two packs of kosher hot dogs, six cans of black beans, and ten cans of tuna.

Fail. Epic fail. Isaac ate 14 hot dogs with buns in...two days. It's Thursday morning. It's only been six days since we bought all that food. However, out of four loaves of bread, we only have half a loaf left. Out of 15 pounds of apples, we only have only a couple three pounds left and I think that's only because 1- the ones that remain are bruised at bit and 2- there were some stragglers that rolled behind our small kitchen appliances in our extra storage cabinets. We have no more black beans, only three cans of tuna (this is only because Philip, Isaac, and I will eat tuna), and out of four gallons of soy milk, we only have half a gallon left.

It's funny because out of all the parenting books and guidelines and internet sites and mommy bloggers and all the media we have about raising children these days, I don't think I've ever seen anyone really illuminate the hell that is a growth spurt, most especially when multiple children experience it at the same time. Then again, maybe our very, very, very, very closely spaced progeny are exceptional and it's only in the amplification of their coinciding growth spurts that we experience such...issues.

About an ENT. An Actual ENT.

2011-03-07T13:09:00.002-05:00

If you follow or just plain read this blog, you may be familiar with my left ear predicament. If not, it can be found here.

Like I said, I used the neti pot. But the problem came back and I broke down and made an ENT appointment. For March 1st. Yes, it took me 2 1/2 months to see one, after all. I was run through the gambit of tests, including a pretty extensive hearing test by an audiologist and was found to not have any hearing damage. But also, no fluid in my ear. However, there might actually be some fluid in my eustachian tube. The doctor prescribed some Claritin, some Nasonex, and twice daily squirtings from a souped-up Neti pot that is a squirt bottle called a Sinus Rinse. Should the ear popping thingy not clear up, I was to make my four week appointment. If it did, cancel and let some other poor schmuck who's been waiting for 2 1/2 months to see an ENT actually get in sooner to see an ENT.

I took my first dose of Claritin on Wednesday morning, did the nasal flush thingy and for the first time in so, so, so, very, very long did not once hear the popping thing in my ear. I awoke feeling like a new me. A new Sabra who was no longer waking with every change in my sleep cycle to the annoying sound of fluid in my brain. I was no longer rolling over to hear a pop, pop, popping in my head that kept me awake. I had felt like I had an uber-demanding newborn who woke every hour and a half with an uber-annoying popping sound and that newborn stayed a newborn for well over a year. The pain in my head had dulled so considerably that it was only with its absence that I realized how bad it was. If, indeed, there is fluid in my eustachian tube, then that's like having a splinter, only bigger, and one that moves and sloshes and POPS whenever you swallow or breathe too deeply with your head down. And on Wednesday morning, the pop was a memory and I felt like I had slept deeply for the first time. Like ever. And I realized just how muddle-brained and ADD and irritable and off I've been for a good year plus.

Then the Claritin, well, FMSU. Or, in church lady terms, caused some issues. I took the second dose on Thursday morning and then could not stay awake. One two hour nap followed by a two hour period of wakefulness preceded a second two hour nap in the afternoon. I was afraid to play chauffeur mom later that day, but I downed a bit of extra coffee and got behind the wheel. I nearly fell asleep again in the wait to transport my child back home.

Friday morning, I skipped the Claritin, it being an antihistamine, it was likely to cause drowsiness and I wasn't going to go through another completely busted day. I took a dose on Friday evening, but ol' Poppy was back and I didn't sleep well yet again.

Now it's war and between the Sinus Rinse and the Claritin and my resolve to sleep well once and for all, I will win. At least, I really, really hope so.

Overall, last week was pretty much a bust, though I'll take several days of bust over dozens of pops every night.

On the Menu- Date and Sabra-Stuffed Chicken Breasts

2011-03-01T06:14:00.008-05:00

When you have a completely wonky first name like Sabra, you kind of feel unique, but bad unique.

I grew up unable to find my name on bicycle license plates at the Western Auto or necklaces at Silver Dollar City and it is only in handmade, custom made things that I ever see my name in any other way other than in print directly related to me.

Then I read a book with a character named Sabra St. Clair and she's a glamorous actress and I thought maybe, just maybe my name might not be so bad except people almost always misspell and mispronounce it. Then I spotted a pair of Sabra nylons at a discount store and wondered what that might mean, that my name is associated with a poorly selling kind of footwear. Then I worked with an English woman who is Jewish and served in the IDF who informed me that my name's literal translation from Hebrew to English is "child of Israel" and this beat the little card someone gave me that said the meaning of my name was "to rest". I'm a hyper one, prone to becoming spastic with caffeine. "To rest" is so not me.

Then the internet powered up and illuminated so many Sabra things, I got a little dizzy after two decades of only knowing three or four little things.

Sabra is a massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Sabra is a orange chocolate liqueur I tasted for the first time in the posh Parnell neighborhood of Auckland.

Image Source

Sabra is a comic book character.

Sabra is a food brand, most famous for hummus.

Sabra is a bad ass tank.

Sabra is a Japanese magazine equivalent to Maxim.

And I've known for years that Sabra is also the fruit of a cactus. Hard and prickly on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside, this trait is also attributed to the Israeli people. This description also fits me. I imagined fixing it one day, cooking a sabra. Sabra eating a sabra and about as inside jokey as one can get, but I can't imagine how to get, much less fix one.

Then I was in the grocery store near about my recent birthday and there was a whole little group of sabra fruit. I picked one up and wondered what to do with it.

Before my birthday, on Valentine's Day, Philip and I went out to dinner. We ate at a higher end restaurant and our little burg's downtown is plagued by two extremes in dining- pizza parlors and sub shops catering to the college student set and high end dining catering to the town's professionals where a main entree is fifteen to thirty bucks a pop. (Man, we could use a family style casual dining spot downtown!). Anyway, I had fig-stuffed chicken. It was...okay. Heavy on cream sauce, I believe, and the flavor came from the sauce and not the stuffing. Philip and I hardly eat out because we can make much better and cheaper food at home.

Well, I thought on this meal and the brand new prickly pear fruit (sabra) I'd gotten for 50 cents and thought dates would be a nice complement to this exotic fruit seeing's how they come from the same general area of the planet. I found a recipe that used dates in the stuffing, read over it and immediately began to modify it. This is what I came up with:

Date and Prickly Pear-Stuffed Chicken

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 cup chopped dates (these are usually always available and used the dried, crumbly ones)
1 prickly pear fruit (sabra)
1/4 cup chopped and shelled pistachio nuts
1/2 teaspoon each of ground cumin, caradamom, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

The prickly pear needs to be cut open.

I found there was a fibrous core that cuts out easily. Put these cores aside. Then the seedless flesh attached to the skin can be cut out and then chopped up. I found that one prickly pear fruit will yield 1/4 cup of this seedless flesh. I found the fibrous core to be quite pomegranate-like (the flesh doesn't easily separate from the fruit) so I improvised and decided to juice the mother.

I got a lot of juice this way, probably about 1/2 a cup (though I didn't measure).

Then, I combined the dates, prickly pear flesh, nuts, and spices.

I split the chicken breasts down the middle so they opened up a bit more and then stuffed them.

Then pan fry this for about seven minutes a side. Now, I found this nicely caramelized the chicken, but the chicken didn't keep its folding and I had to press down on the breasts with spatulas for the whole seven minutes. NOT RECOMMENDED. My arms got tired after a quarter of an hour of this, so I shoved them in the oven at 350 degrees until they were cooked through (about 10-15 more minutes) for a total of about 25-30 minutes cook time. I took the sabra juice and put it in the frying pan and let it reduce and caramelize. This served as a sauce over the top of the stuffed chicken.

Too tired to do a proper side, so it's plain brown rice

Now, this lower-calorie, dairy-free stuffed chicken mopped the floor with that $19 single serving fig-stuffed chicken entree from the Valentine's Day. My version was extremely flavorful and the chicken was super juicy. However, from the first few bites, I could tell it could be improved.

Suggested, but not yet tried improvements:

Add 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves

Add a second prickly pear fruit, increasing the stuffing amount from 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup and doubling the sauce amount

Pound out the chicken so that's it's flatter and easier to stuff AND tie it up or use toothpicks to keep the sides closed and the stuffing in

Pan fry it as before, but finish it in the oven as this seemed to be the best of both cooking methods

On the Menu- Homemade Bagels

2011-02-21T09:56:00.004-05:00

We are now making our own bagels. Used to be we were able to get our favorite bag of bagels for $1.88, on sale for $1.50 sometimes. For six bagels, that seemed rather reasonable. Then the price shot up along with my kids' appetites and so we are now making our own. Philip and I got into the kitchen to make a couple of batches.

We used this recipe and directions and though we do own and frequently use a bread machine, we prefer to bake most breads the old fashioned way. It makes 8 big bagels per batch.

Philip kneading a batch.

I had a notion the night before I planned to go into bagel-making mode that I wanted apple pie bagels. I'm not a pie person, which I fully realize that for a Southerner is blasphemy, but my people are from Missouri. Still, I make some kick ass sweet potato pie. Anyway, I decided to throw something together that would be apple pie-ish. I peeled and chopped two small sweet apples (Fuji or Gala, I can't remember as we keep copious amounts of good apples 'round the house at all times). Then I mixed up the base bagel recipe from the link above and then threw in some brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

Apple pie sugar and spices for Apple Pie Bagels.
(Don't ask what the proportions are, 'cause I dunno know. Philip and I notoriously bad for throwing together things without measuring, instead doing it by sight, smell, taste, and just plain gut instinct)

We use our pressure cooker for bagel boiling as it holds about 6-7 good sized bagels per boil.

Fresh out of the oven, homemade bagels already look better than store-bought, preservative-packed ones. Lets not even talk about the smell.

This was an apple pie bagel with cream cheese and apple butter on top. It tasted almost exactly like apple pie.

Moving On

2011-02-17T05:00:00.002-05:00

I always think it's weird when you reach the point when you know, beyond any doubt, that you are done with someone, someplace, or something. There's an epiphany like the climax of a story and as the denouement takes hold and you get used to not just the idea of moving on, but that you have, indeed, already moved on. There's such a peace that comes with that realization.

I'm not just done with the novel I started in July 2006, I'm also moving on. It's been like a switch. I have nothing to add to it. I'm not thinking about it anymore. The characters exist there on the page and no longer in my head. Their story is told, their conflicts explored and resolved, their own epiphanies realized and acted upon. I've added all I needed to add. I've taken away all that needed to be taken away. I can't make it any better. It is complete.

And that feels so weird. When I did this before- wrote a novel and revised it seemingly innumerable times- the above-mentioned novel was putting so much pressure on me that I had to chose between the two. I eventually had to accept that the first novel was a failed one, but that was okay as I was a full year into drafting the next one (and this doesn't count all the time I spent thinking, but not writing one single word on it, about the next novel while I still revising the first).

I wrote and saved the "first" chapter of my next next novel (number three) in late November 2007, half a year after I realized the first novel I had written was a failure, and 1 1/3 years after I started full on drafting my second novel. I have always been like that. I can keep everything separate in my mind and on the page. I switch it up depending on my mood, what story puts the most pressure on me to tell it, and when I need a break from the narrative I've been too involved with lately.

Now, however, with only the one novel occupying my brain space, I feel a little unmoored. You'd think it'd be the opposite, but I'm at that early stage where nothing feels concrete. Having completed my first "successful" novel, I can look back and remember all the time I spent researching certain things that didn't end up in the finished work at all. I can remember the early structure I wanted to use and that went out the door and I don't even know when or how that was abandoned. That novel underwent so many changes and rearrangements and revisions and overhauls and all sorts of literary shit that just a glance at all the saved versions on my computer is dizzying, much less the actual thousands of pages and thousands upon thousands of words. I can hardly fathom the daily explorations and decisions I tried and rejected (or kept) that now make up the finished work. And that's behind me.

Ignorance is bliss and now that I know what it took to get the second novel where it is now, I'm intimidated about writing the next one. I want to do this and that and make this point and try out this voice and blah, blah, blah, but...

Drafting is cake for me. I can draft all damned day. I know that I can revise the fuck out of something, too. I know, too, that I can draft faster and better than ever before, but revising faster and better doesn't make me feel so certain about where I'm going next.

It's conventional wisdom in the literary world that the second novel is the career linchpin. That is, if an author can sell well enough to publish beyond the debut novel. From the outside looking in, I always believed this to be a matter of the public-ness of the writer's work. After all, if the first novel is out, there are reviews and ratings and readings and sales records to fugger up the writer as he or she goes forward into the next novel. It's one reason I have been adamant about having 50,000 + words of the next novel drafted before I started submitting the completed one.

Well, now, I think that conventional wisdom needs to be rewritten as an "insider" looking out. Novels are interesting beasts and undoubtedly, I am wired more for this form than any other. However, they are, at times, unwieldy beasts. There are so many good passages and whole chapters I've excised from my finished novel; they just didn't fit the narrative arc of the story once it took more its more solid and complete form. Looking back, these were necessary evils. Looking forward, though, it's hard to imagine that I might spend a week drafting a chapter, a month revising it, and then in the end, it doesn't appear in the final work.

I think that's why second novels can fugger up writers. It's that anticipated futility. I didn't have that before. My first written and failed novel was never pulled apart over and over and over and rewritten and reassembled and messed with some more. So, I went blithely into the next novel and simply did what I had to do to get it where it needed to be. BTDT and that makes all the difference.

My husband says this will happen with this novel. That I'll get the novel mostly completely drafted and start revising and then get down to making it what it is supposed to and has to be. I have to, in other words, trust the process. I have to trust it'll take what it takes to get written and revised and done and take as long as it takes. In the end, I have to appreciate the blessing and luxury I have to be able to write several hours a day and trust that if I've done this before, I can do it again.

On the Menu- Salmon Burgers

2011-02-07T05:00:00.002-05:00

In our quest for something new, Philip and I dragged out our recipe books and magazines and he wanted to make the Salmon Burgers in the _________ copy of Cooking Light. Yes, it's not really salmon burger weather, but our house is warm, the ingredients are available, so what the hell?

I love to couple salmon that uses a honey mustard mixture with sweet potato fries and use Newman's Own Honey Mustard salad dressing as a dipping sauce. Lastly, we accompanied all of this with an I.B.C. Cream Soda and once again, we enjoyed another filling, but not stuffing meal.

On the Menu- Thai Dinner

2011-01-31T05:00:00.001-05:00

We have been cooking. New stuff. I blame the weather. It snowed a wee bit 'round here on Thanksgiving morning, but melted by the time the college football games got on. Then we had a very long stretch of nothing. No precip at all. Then it snowed. Then it froze. Then no precip at all. Winter is a sort of stasis for nature, but when there's a snowing, sunshining, melting differentiation, well, it makes it okay. However, when it's the same snow sitting on the ground for two solid weeks with nothing new, it's a little unnerving. So, we've been adding new recipes to fill our need for something different.

Firstly, I picked up the latest issue of Cooking Light with this need in mind. It's one of the best issues I've seen and is about chicken. You know that chicken that has been "plumped" and then when you cook it it shrivels up into nearly nothing? Well, it's pumped up with saline, i.e. sodium. So even though we're paying $5.00 a pound for non-plumped chicken, we're getting healthier and meatier proportions.

We had used some coconut milk for another recipe. Don't ask me what, I don't remember at the moment, so since we had some left over, we decided to do the Cooking Lights Thai Coconut Chicken marinade. We accompanied this with some rice noodles with bell pepper stir fry in a peanut sauce. It was absolutely delicious and exactly the type of filling, but not stuffing meal we love.

(Almost) Too Cool for Homeschool- Hitting Our Homeschooling Stride

2011-01-24T16:46:00.002-05:00

There is probably some sort of homeschool timeline that occurs. Like when you live in another country and experience culture shock at a reasonably consistent point in your stay. During our first evaluation last year, our evaluator commented that the first year of homeschooling is just for getting through. She might have even used the word surviving. Yeah, I sooooo get that. I felt like it was mostly about survival. This year, there was a bit of scrambling like I wrote about before, but now, with the winter break to plan and prepare, I feel like we've finally hit a stride.

Math- We're still working through the 5th grade math. Teaching long division and football/cheerleading season at the same time is a bad idea. Next year, we'll know to do something like measurement during those two/two and a half months.

Science- We're onto the 7th grade middle school Life Science textbook (half a school year early).

Reading/Social Studies- We're finishing off our Greek unit and then after Spring Break we'll go into The Aeneid via Penelope Lively's In Search of a Homeland before we move onto some of the peoples conquered by the Romans (the Celts via Henty's Beric the Briton and we'll read Masada: The Last Fortress by Gloria D. Miklowitz for starters, but a great deal of Rosemary Sutcliff's body of work features the British Isles under Roman rule). Then the Roman Empire itself with a specific reading unit based on The Eagle of the Ninth.

Diagramming- Diagramming is going better, which I should probably blog about separately. In a nutshell, the kids now understand how words in sentence are both a part of speech and have a function in the sentence. They need to know both in order to diagram well.

Vocabulary- We're still working through Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop. It's going better. Like long division, it's not one of those things that goes with football/cheerleading season.

We've actually added curriculum recently. We've added 6th grade Saxon Grammar and Writing and the kids are sailing through that already. We'll continue through Saxon's 7th and 8th grade curriculum in these subjects as soon as the kids complete the previous units. We've added daily 30 minutes lessons from Madrigal's Magic Keys to Spanish in addition to their 30 minutes per day of Rosetta Stone.

Part of the reason things are going better is that they are able to do more and more independent work. They'll all read their Social Studies and then outline it. They read their chapters for reading and then summarize it. We also have a pretty clear cut schedule and they are able to complete their assignments within the allotted time. They'll get their lectures and discussions and lessons on with Philip and me and then do their independent work without prompting (it helps that it's on their individualized schedule).

Philip gets up in the morning, as always at 4 AM (lately earlier as his research is cooking) and I get up at 5ish/5:30ish and get my writing on. By the time Philip gets back from lab/working out and has done with Math and Science with the kids, I'm ready for a break and teach my first lesson with them. Then they get their first break and after that, independent work which gives me another hour to hour and a half of writing work before I'm back to kid lessons. It's win-win-win!

Female Voice

2011-01-10T14:56:00.003-05:00

Well, as I posted before, I started Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children last year and it carried me over to 2011. Then I started J.R.R. Tolkein's The Fellowship of the Ring, but that was a little slow, so I put it aside- temporarily- for Benjamin Percy's novel, The Wilding. After three very male voices, I really needed a female author, so I got Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. I first began reading Atwood, but it's a dystopian novel, so I had to switch to the Simonson debut.

As a reader, I haven't really ever experienced such a need for a female literary voice as I have this month. Interesting...

A Year in Books

2010-12-30T14:44:00.006-05:00

One of my main sidebars here in these parts is the "Literature I'm Reading" section. It was novels or some sort, but then I read more memoirs and short story collections than I ever have in any given year, so I had to change it. I am fully aware of how pretentious the use of the word literature is. I don't include everything I'm reading. Research non-fiction books or the stuff I use for the kids' homeschool, so literature is the best I can come up with.

I didn't read as much this year as I would have liked. I blame two things- Netflix and the workload I've had this year. Between the availability of some of our (Philip and me) favorite TV series- Project Runway, Top Chef, Weeds, Mad Men, and Friday Night Lights- there were a lot of evenings and weekends watching the boob tube. Seriously, we went through all seven available Project Runway seasons, a full Top Chef season, Season 5 of Weeds, the first three of Mad Men and the first three of Friday Night Lights in 2010 alone. The TV watching is directly correlated to the workload. In attempting to be a productive member of society and this household, sometimes I was just too spent to do anything in the evenings other than veg on TV shows and movies. In other words, writing novels and homeschooling and teaching at a community college and being a "housewife" kind of, sort of kicked my ass.

Still, there were some good books to be had:

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

The Years by Virginia Woolf

The Color of Water by James McBride

Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Eden Hunter by Skip Horack

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon

Mentor by Tom Grimes

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Emma by Jane Austen

Sula by Toni Morrison

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

I began the year with going back to an old tried and true of mine in E.M. Forster. I do this sometimes when I get disillusioned with contemporary literatures' lack of polish. Yes, mediocre work gets published and I needed a good literature fix like a junkie needs his gear.

Sterling recommended Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson. I believe McPherson was a professor of Sterling's at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Highly recommend this collection to Southerners, those of/in the lower middle class, and those concerned with race and class issues.

I had anxiously awaited the publication of Sam Lipsyte's The Ask since reading his phenomenal Home Land. Not as good as Home Land, but worthwhile, nonetheless.

Perhaps the most delightful thing I read this year was Virginia's Woolf's The Years. Wow! It is a tome of a novel, but it really is masterpiece. She manages to start the novel in a very Victorian voice and by the end, not only has the narrative moved through time, but so has the voice and she closes the book with a full-on Modernist voice. It was quite amazing and as I read I distinctly began to feel a disconnectedness of spirit, the exact sort of feeling the Modernist's experienced with the post-industrial revolution and tried to articulate in their work. It was uncanny and something to look further into as a study in language's ability to evoke such a visceral reaction. I should note, too, that both Woolf and Forster have scenes in their novels in which a character is transported in motorcar and has the feeling of detachment as a result.

The Color of Water by James McBride was another memoir. Through it, he discovers the true heritage of his mother.

I wanted a Southern author fix, so relied on Dorothy Allison and Carson McCullers. The former definitely has a more Southern voice, while the latter wrote spookily mature for her age.

After The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I definitely needed something lighter, so read Patrick Suskind's translation of Perfume. It's a rich as the movie version and amazingly visceral.

I switched into some short story collections because of Tin House. I workshopped with Charlie D'Ambrosio and heard a reading by Karen Russell, another workshop faculty member. Very different styles, but brilliant in their own ways.

I met Skip Horack at Napa in 2009 and he is a Louisiana native. He published his first novel this year, a follow-up to his excellent short story collection- Southern Cross. A highly literary novel.

Totally switched gears to fluff in Phillippa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance. She's known mostly for her The Other Boleyn Sister, which was adapted into a film starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman.

Then back on the literary bandwagon with a Pulitzer winner in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, a novel by the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature with Mario Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller, and a metaphysical journey novel in Aleksander Hemon's The Lazarus Project.

Dipped back into memoir with Mentor by Tom Grimes. He spoke at Tin House, had some great lectures, and is Charlie's literary BFF. Absolutely a must read for any aspiring Writer.

Every year I read one new Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison novel. This year was Cat's Eye and Sula respectively. Cat's Eye was wonderful and Atwood is a master of so much that she deserves her place with the Nobel laureates. You hear that Sweden?!? Her way with structure and subtle clues to the reader that lock us into her story are so great.

I also reread a Jane Austen novel every year. In 2010, I picked up Emma.

My Antonia by Willa Cather began well, but by the end, I felt like it was a fictionalized memoir. This would probably be fine, but it read like a memoir. You know, a bad memoir where the narrative has no arc and seems rather random. Yeah, yeah, it was chronological and was centered on Antonia, but I didn't find this to be enough narrative glue. There was no plot building to a climax, IKWIM.

I'm ending the year (and beginning 2011 as it's another big novel) with Salman Rushdie's first novel, Midnight's Children, which earned him a Booker Prize. Wow! Starts out great, but damn if I'm not feeling so, so, so many Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides vibes. Since Midnight's Children came first, well, you do the math. I googled my gut feeling and got a slew of hits. Other readers who've read both see the similarities, too.

I am so looking forward to seeing what I'll read in 2011. I already know some of the works. Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, which comes out in February. She read from this at Tin House and it sounded so fucking great and I normally don't like the way books "read" at readings. The next month Alan Heathcock's collection of short stories entitled Volt comes out. Alan was also at Tin House and I met him the very last day there. In April, my friend Alexi Zentner's first novel (because I know there will be many many more) comes out. Alexi is a mensch and I'm soooo looking forward to Touch. I will also probably pick up The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. I think she and Alexi went to Cornell together.

I have to admit my most looked forward to read of 2011 will be Rebecca Makkai's The Borrower to be published in June. Rebecca's short stories are just luminous in their brilliance, I mean how many writers appear in three consecutive Best American Short Stories anthologies? Rebecca's also a great gal with a great combination of a hard work ethic, intelligence, talent, sense of humor, and down-to-earth sensibilities.

(Almost) Too Cool for Homeschool- Estamos Aprendiendo Espanol

2010-12-21T06:17:00.002-05:00

The thing about homeschool is that the parents get to choose the curriculum. Even in one of the most heavily regulated states for homeschoolers- Pennsylvania- as long as you teach the required subjects, how, when, and what resources used are up to the parents. Emphasis in certain areas not normally taught in schools- public or private- can be made at home. We, for instance, want our music program to actually teach our kids to read music and not this bizarre ta-ta-ti business that they got at their local B&M school. For art, we can teach technique and unrestrained art appreciation. Can you imagine how well Botticelli's Birth of Venus would go over at a public elementary school? At home, my kids were the ones who made the connection between the painting and Aphrodite.

One of the things I wanted to make sure to emphasize was foreign language education. I have been a big fan of the Rosetta Stone program because of how effortless it becomes (after the first few days of using it and the comprehension kicks in) to learn and think in another language. Shoshana has taken to it and is about a unit ahead of her siblings. She asks to do Spanish above and beyond what is required during the school week.

I noticed, however, they the kids were struggling a bit with conversation. With the picture and all the visual cues of Rosetta Stone, they were definitely learning, but a great deal of the information wasn't extending to conversation. Before the school year began, I had plunked down a little moolah to get a high school Spanish textbook. I had hoped that it would be an adequate supplement to Rosetta Stone. I was wrong.

The book (more highly recommended on Amazon than other Spanish textbooks, mind you) was even worse than I remember my Spanish textbooks from high school and college. It was, in a word, useless. Why does our nation teach our kids a foreign language this way and why do we usually wait until they are in high school to do so?

When this year's homeschool got underway I didn't worry about a supplement. Recently, though, Shoshana asked me what the Spanish word for cereal was. I didn't know. I'm not entirely ignorant. I had four semesters of college Spanish back to back- Fall, Spring, and two summer sessions. I was thinking and dreaming in Spanish by the end of it all. I can follow along in Spanish movies and get the gist, usually only using the subtitles to confirm meaning. But I still didn't know a lot of words. I, too, needed to learn Spanish (at least more of it) if my kids were going to be successful.

I looked around and found a recommended book called Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. I knew this was rather old school as the illustrations in the book are by Andy Warhol and sure enough, the original copyright date is 1951. If this book were turned into an actual bona fide textbook, maybe Americans would actually be able to speak the foreign languages they were taught in school instead of bungling around after two years of high school and two years of college foreign language instruction without knowing the word for a major staple in their diet. A staple called cereal, for instance.

The concept around Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish is to use as many English-Spanish cognates as possible. I was all up into this and when we got the book and I decided to teach out of it, I decided to give my kiddos a quick lesson in the history of the English language. I drew a crude map of the most western parts of Europe. I pulled out my college textbook from the 400-level History of the English Language course I had taken. I talked about Indo-European language families and how most of the British Isles were filled with Celtic language families. There were two prongs to this family- the continental, which I explained meant mainland Europe, and insular, which meant island. Gaulish in Northern France was the only continental Celtic language, while the insular branch was further divided into Goidelic and Britannic. Goidelic is Irish, Scots Gaelic (and I left off Manx, since it's dead) and wrote these languages on their respective European land masses. Britannic is Welsh (a little chunk on the west coast), Cornish (the toe sticking out the southern and western end of the island), and Breton. Then the Romans invaded and pushed these Celtic language speakers to the fringes of the land (I left off about Hadrian's Wall) and they established Latin and the language of the land. At least, in theory.

When the Roman Empire collapsed and they withdrew, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded from the mainland. They spoke a variant of Old German (at least, this is what I remembered). So not only did some Celtic language get mixed up with Latin, but then some Old German got put in as well. Then we had Old English. I went into the whole Angle = English thing and the whole Wessex = West Saxons and Essex = East Saxons and Sussex = South Saxons and Norfolk = North Folk and how all these English counties are named the former. Then the Vikings invaded and they brought Old Norse with them. So now we have yet another language blending in. In fact, as my History of the English Language and Old English Literature professor explained, a great deal of the domestic words we have in English today came not from Latin or French, but Celtic, Old German, and Old Norse. The word egg, for instance is from Old Norse. Already we had learned that English adopts and borrows words from other languages. We've learned that polis is Greek for city and that metropolis is Greek for mother city and we also use its derivatives like metropolitan and cosmopolitan. Now, we had a fly by about the truer complexity of English. We will in the course of our homeschool curriculum go into the history and such of the Romans and Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and Vikings, and next on the list of British Isle invaders, the French. At least, the northern French AKA the Normans and William the Conqueror. He brought in Old French and then things really started changing. With the addition of Old French, we had a great deal of cognates with one of the major language groups of Europe- Italic.

I wrote Italic on the board and asked the kids what word they saw in it. "Italy!" They pretty much all screamed. I drew a line down and wrote Latin and broke out our coins with their E pluribus unum Latin motto on them. Then I wrote Vulgar Latin and explained that Latin was the formal, proper, written form while Vulgar Latin was the informal spoke form. From Vulgar Latin we got the Romance Languages and they all giggled. I asked what word they could see in romance, and I got another excited shout, this time of "Roman!" I then wrote down all the Romance languages- French, Provencal, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Italian, Rhaeto-Romansch, Sardinian, Walloon, and Canadian French. (I added Cajun French, you know, just because). Because all of the Romance languages came from Vulgar Latin, they are often very similar and because Old French heavily influenced what we now speak in English, there are a lot of cognates between English and the foreign language we are learning- Spanish.

So I pop open Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish and begin Leccion Numero Uno. Words that end in "or" are often identical in the two languages. We got through those- doctor/doctor and actor/actor, etc. Then we get to the next part. Words that end in "al" are also often identical in both languages animal/animal and educacional/educational. Then, and here's where I get all soap boxy about the absolutely pathetic state of American foreign language education...cereal/cereal. Being a product of a Louisiana public school, I'd gotten French language instruction most of my childhood and in high school, I chose to take Spanish. I am nearly 38 now and in all that time and all that foreign language instruction- far more than most public school products, truth to told- I hadn't learned the word for one of the main foods in my diet. And yet there it was in the very first lesson of a nearly 60 year old book, exactly the same in both languages.

About an ENT. Any ENT.

2010-12-15T14:26:00.003-05:00

I have been sick. Again. This time an intense, but short-lived head cold. Just prior to getting said head cold, I'd had about enough of a popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear.

This popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear started up about a year ago. Last November, November of 2009, I was always sneezing. Every morning I'd wake up and have a sneezing fit (I'm one to sneeze in threes so my fits always came in triplets and I'd triple-sneeze my way into the day). Then I got a head cold and kept sneezing. Then I noticed this popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear. Eventually, the interslice learned me on my problem.

I have an allergy to ragweed. I know this. Every time I visited my grandparents in Missouri over the summers I got all congested and sneezy and there was my Grandma doling out the Sudafed like little sweet candies. The interslice, however, learned me that chamomile and ragweed are in the same family. Allergic to one, likely- highly likely- allergic to the other. And I, having abandoned the cyberschool I'd signed up my kids for, and beginning full on traditional homeschool for them as well as scrambling together the curriculum, was quite stressed out about November of last year. And being on the not-wanting-to-turn-on-the-super-expensive-heat-until-it's-consistently-below-zero-degrees-Fahrenheit, was drinking a lot of tea. A lot of hot, tension taming tea, because I very much needed my body warmed up and my tension tamed. The tension taming tea I used very much helped on both counts. But its main ingredient being chamomile, I suspect caused the whole sneezing in triplet fits. I stopped drinking the tea, my sneezing fits ceased, but the whole popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear persisted through the whole of the winter, spring, summer- complete with four cross-country flights, fall, and was worse by the time this winter came around.

Always being one to leave off antibiotics unless it's a biggie like Strep or Pneumonia, I just left the popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear alone. Then the sound was waking me up at night and I started to get paranoid about hearing loss and I finally called to make an appointment with an ENT. This Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor might prescribe antibiotics, or allergy meds, or even steroids. Should these remedies prove to be ineffective, the ENT might slice open my ear drum, suck out any fluid, which by this time might have actually solidified into something called "ear glue" (the interslice learned me this, too), and then insert a tube in my ear like a chronically ear-infected child. Though I'm really not one for the antibiotics (wanna see something fun, put a natural redhead on antibiotics, put her in the sun for just a wee bit, and watch the skin bloom bright red near instantly), or allergy meds (Philip lost his sense of smell for a good long while due to one of those spiffy new inhalant allergy meds), and don't know that I'd ever been on steroids (and what fun things they might have in store for me), I was willing to go that route. I was even willing for the whole slice and suck method, though I did wonder how my love for baths would change as a result of the whole tube-in-ear thing. So I called.

I live in a rural area. There is a nationally ranked health care system in this area. There are nine, 9, nuevo, neuf, neun ENTs within 10 miles of my front door at this nationally ranked health care system. And the earliest I could get in to see one was the day after my birthday. My birthday is February 24th. Yes, I'd have to wait 2 1/2 months to get this keeping-me-awake-at-night-popping-fluid-dilly-o-in-my-left-ear even addressed.

Then I got a head cold and the popping, fluid dilly-o in my left ear was exacerbated ten fold. Out came the neti pot. Philip had encouraged me to use the neti pot, but he said it felt weird and uncomfortable and for some reason I thought this meant mind boggling irritating with that itchy on the inside that you can't scratch feeling. But I was desperate. Philip mixed me up a pot with the accompanying saline mixtures and I tipped my head and poured water up my nose. It felt weird, but not horribly so, but the bubbles were annoying.

"Why are there bubbles?" Philip asked.

"I dunno. You're the one who told me to do it."

"But there shouldn't be bubbles."

Shoulder shrug.

"Was there soap in here?" He asked.

Shoulder shrug. "I didn't put soap in it."

"Did the kids?"

Shoulder shrug. "Probably." (It's cute when you're kids flatter you by imitation with their little literary compositions, but when they flatter your chemist husband, sometimes you get interesting little mixtures around the house and possibly soap up your nose and throughout your sinus cavity.) "I smell soap. Does my nose smell like soap?" Philip leaned forward, sniffed my schnoz. "You smell like soap."

While he rinsed out the neti pot and refilled it for a second, soap-free go, I did the whole hold your nose and blow thing.

"My ear popped! My left ear popped!" I was freakin' ecstatic. The damned thing hadn't popped in months not even with a flight all the way to Portland, Oregon and back.

I did another neti pot session and haven't once heard a single pop from my left ear.

Yeah, I had googled my problem words like "adult fluid in middle ear" and got me all learned up on my predicament. There was even one little message board in which one person, just one single person, recommended the neti pot. Well, I'm a believer now, a convert, I will bow down to the neti pot, I will proselytize for the neti pot, but with just caveat- skip the soap.

Uninspired

2010-12-06T15:46:00.004-05:00

On Thursday, I wanted to write. I had images in my head that were worthwhile. I had dreamt about my short story and saw a way to get my characters where they were going faster as per Charlie's suggestion. However, whenever I sat down to write, I had no words. There were images in my mind's eye, but no sentences in my mind's ear.

This state of being can be disconcerting and it reminded me of pregnant brain. When I was pregnant with Isaac and Samara, I made myself a bowl of cereal. I put the cereal box in the fridge and the milk in the pantry and did not notice my mistake until I next opened the fridge for something else. When I was pregnant with Shoshana we were living in Germany. I had stopped by the Franconian bakery Der Beck for something or another. My brain managed to register that everyone around me was speaking a different language and to get what I wanted, I, too, needed to speak another language. Unfortunately, that's as far as my thought processes went as when I was asked what I wanted to order, I began to speak in Spanish.

So on Thursday, my brain weren't working so well. I left off writing, wanting and needing to be inspired. On Friday, not only did I not have words, I didn't even have images. There was nothing to clean, nothing to cook, homeschool as usual and without words or images, I probably would have left off writing yet again. But I didn't. I sat down and opened up my novel and just started reading. Even though there weren't words or images in my brain. I didn't even have hope that I would be able to revise anything in such a state. But I did. Five full chapters of revision all when I didn't feel the least bit inspired. While I'm still not sure how much inspiration (drafting) and perspiration (revising) is a good mix, Thomas Edison's quote, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," seems to hold some degree of truth. Write or do something writerly, even when you don't feel like it.

Conflicted

2010-12-01T07:10:00.002-05:00

Learned long time ago that want + obstacle = conflict (and conflict + action = story, but that's another post).

I am conflicted about blogging. Again.

But first a digression about decisions and decision making. I came across an article recently about giving advice. I thought it was interesting given that I have had five/sixish different people bug the ever living crap out of me with the whole advice thing. Five/sixish people I have been close with. Five/sixish people who so bugged the ever living crap out of me that I actually learned that their behavior has a label- Help-Rejecting Complaining. And if you don't click over, help-rejecting complaining is basically folk who whine and complain (usually about the same things over and over- money, his or her spouse (and it's uber fun when both husband and wife are bitching about each other to you), her kid's school problems, her boyfriend issues, etc.) and ask for advice (or seem to solicit it with all their complaining) and then promptly don't follow your advice (or do the exact opposite) and then they are back to complaining about the SAME issue(s) all over again. These help-rejecting complaining folk are obviously conflicted, perhaps neurotically so (perhaps they do it for attention as the link suggests and manage to create a victim persona quite easily with all the problems they always seem to have and never are able to fix). Conflicted.

Conflicted = someone with a want + a seemingly insurmountable obstacle

I remember being conflicted about a boyfriend. I sat on my friend's kitchen countertop blab, blab, blabbing about my relationship problems while she listened and mixed up some sort of iced coffee drink. I had a want- to be with my boyfriend- and an obstacle- he wasn't treating me right- and was, therefore, conflicted. I sought advice from my friend because I was so severely conflicted about continuing the relationship. Which I did, for way, way too many months. Only in hindsight did I realize that in not only being conflicted about the relationship, but being so conflicted that I sought outside advice, that the relationship was doomed. I wasn't going to change this boyfriend. He was who he was. He treated me as he treated me. Nothing was going to change that. My love for him and all the work I'd done and all the excuses I made for him didn't mean a thing because he wasn't changing (and wouldn't change) and I needed him to change so that I would be treated better.

In hindsight, I came to realize that any time someone asks for relationship advice- should I get back together with this person, should I continue to work on this relationship, should I give him/her another chance- the relationship is already DOOMED because the complainer is already so conflicted. There is a want and a major obstacle that probably can't be overcome as that obstacle likely has to do with how another person fundamentally is/acts. (This is not to say that break up/divorce is eminent, which in over half of these five/sixish help-rejecting complainers hasn't happened. But a healthy relationship is highly unlikely. I mean, can you be in a healthy relationship if you are complaining about your significant other in the 1990s and still complaining a decade later? Prolly not.)

On July 14, 2006, I started drafting my current novel. I had a flurry of drafting for a couple three months and then left off it for a good long while. However, in that time, I have only drafted a little bitty bit of new fiction. I mean like a short story or two, some of my next novel, but I didn't ever really sit down and write new fiction. The majority of the past 4+ years have been spent revising what I had already written whether that was my first complete, but failed novel, this current one, or other smaller pieces.

It sounds like a stupid analogy (but in my goopy-eyed, groggy state, it'll have to do), but this sort of attention to revision is like eating waffles and french toast every day for nearly every meal. Sometimes ya just wants some variety in your diet. I think the lack of variety, sometimes the completely mundane quality of yet another revision is why so many "writers" leave off most major revisions and simply edit their work. I'm guessing they'll eventually do brain research and find that the act of drafting new material fires up some majorly pleasurable areas of the brain and the act of revision is buried somewhere else that usually doesn't pleasure much of anyone.

Yesterday, I printed off 133 pages of my current novel. One hundred thirty-three pages that I felt were done. Done done. I had spent several mornings revising these 133 pages and discovered that I was rephrasing one single paragraph in one chapter, correcting a typo in another, merely changing a dialogue tag in yet another. In essence, those first 11 chapters were done. In moving onto page 134, I began to see some flaws that I needed to correct, but I have spent a very long time with this book and that need to escape with fiction can sometimes be as strong with a writer as it is with a reader. In other words, sometimes we get sick of our own stuff and just want to do something new. This, however, can be a trap because whatever pleasure centers in the brain that get lit up in drafting (unconfirmed, but my strong instinct that this happens because so many writer's speak of a writing or drafting high) want to stay on. If I don't force myself away from thinking on the next novel or force myself back to the page before me, then I would definitely fall victim to never getting better at the craft of it all. And revising and craft and yet again looking at the same words over and over again can be tedious; it can border on drudgery. But it has to happen and it, in and of itself, can be exhausting.

I think that blogging is a way to light up some of those pleasure centers in the brain while not actually being forced to do the really mind exhausting work of drafting. Because what I write about is not autobiographical, I take massive leaps of faith into my imagination and creativity and do a lot of conjuring of scenes and people and dialogue and yada, yada, yada. I am tired when I draft and it's not the same sort of eye-weariness and brain exhaustion of revising. I'm always warm when I draft and I lose a couple three pounds when I draft though I'm eating more. My brain is having a full-on workout. If I draft for three to four hours in the morning, I'm barely good for much of anything until two or three in the afternoon. When you're homeschooling three children and one of them has football for 15+ hours a week for 2 1/2 months of the year, this doesn't always work out so well.

So I think blogging is a nice medium of writing new stuff without the full on brain drain of drafting a short story or novel. It's fluff. It's usually meaningless and I'd be surprised if it made the world a better place for anyone except me.

I must also admit that I am a little suspicious of successful bloggers. You know the ones. They are always posting new material, there seems to be a never-ending stream of words from them on a regular basis and only major life events like surgery or near nervous breakdowns stem their flow. These bloggers seem to have a persona they wrap around them before they sit down to blog be it a super zany, always-in-a-crisis one; or a maven of whatever artistic niche they've chosen; or a biting sarcastic wittiness; or an over-sharing, everything-in-their-life-is-so-fucking-epic one. It always struck me as work to maintain this sort of internet facade. And I would rather work at other sorts of writing...

I am send-off close to finishing my novel and I have two new books to work on- one brand-spanking new. I have short story ideas to explore (and actually workable ones since my friendship with Rebecca Makkai and reading her short stories has helped me to understand what material is short story-worthy). Revising and blogging seem to go together better than drafting and blogging. Part of me wants to stay true to my word about blogging every week about the subjects I've chosen to write about. But I know that am I too ambitious in my fiction for there to be room for both. Perhaps if I were not pulling out my lecture notes from a community college English course I taught to teach my homeschooled kids how to write an essay, or staying on top of them to do Rosetta Stone Spanish everyday, or teaching them science more in depth than I ever got in public schools or college, it would be different. That's not my reality.

Still, as days and weeks go by without new posts from me on my dashboard, I remain conflicted about my silence.

Cheating on NaNoWriMo

2010-11-17T08:25:00.003-05:00

NaNoWriMo- National Novel Writing Month- is very prescriptive in its scope. Firstly, it has to fall within the bounds of the month of November, a shortish month many complain, and also a month with a major U.S. holiday, which many more complain about, and a cranking up holiday shopping season to boot. You can register BEFORE November, but you cannot enter a word count until midnight local time on November 1st. Seriously, they release the word count functions on midnight one time zone at a time as the Earth rotates itself into the official Novel Writing Month of November.

NaNoWriMo is for NEW material, a new novel just waiting for November to come around to come springing out of head and hands in one explosive, 50,000-word release.

NaNoWriMo forbids the inner editor. You are supposed to just draft because editing and revising might silence the inner creative who just wants to tell the tale.

I am cheating on NaNoWriMo, most people do. Firstly, I started this novel a while back and had 25,000ish words already drafted (as I've stated before). So it's not new material. I did not, however, enter those previously drafted words into my official NaNoWriMo word count. That would be really cheating rather than somewhat cheating. I know of writers who do that, who come in on the end of the first day with 20,000-30,000 word word counts. Not necessarily asshole hacks, but actual bona fide published authors with novels out by reputable, established publishers.

I am also cheating by editing and revising as I go. It's not stopped my drafting process, but rather promotes it by giving me little post-draft nuggets of gold that carry me over into the next day's drafting.

So, I'm cheating. There's my confession. Here's my caveat...

Whenever I hear prescriptive ways of writing I always have a STFU response. I think the strongest, and perhaps even the first of these, came when I read Robert Olen Butler's _From Where You Dream_ in which he states, "...It is crucial that you write everyday.." He goes onto to say, "But if you take two days off and you're on very thin ice. If you let three or four days go by it's as if you've never written a word in your entire life." This is, of course, bullshit and from a man with multiple failed marriages (all of which- four- ended up in divorce and were likely less than successful during their duration given the bizarre and acrimonious split of his last) and one kid (who likely was mostly raised by one of his ex-wives). Since I began writing again when I had twin infants and was pregnant with a third, since I've completed so much and also taught myself the majority of the craft I have learned, since I now homeschool and wear so, so many time consuming hats, I can give ROB a hearty STFU about his writing consistency prescription. I don't write everyday. However, I try to write more often than not because I believe regular writing rather than occasional writing grows writing muscles. I, also, live in reality and not some ivory tower of academia or some sort of construct of the artistic life. I also get the flu.

My mop-the-floor word count successes during the first week of NaNoWriMo (I was far exceeding the 1667 per day word count goal and not losing- not only NOT LOSING, but kicking some serious literary wording ass- language), then went silent when I got the flu. I am coming out of it after losing all those days of drafting delight, my word count looks so mediocre and unsuccessful. Those, however, are NaNoWriMo's prescriptive parameters.

A lot of people look down on the event. Most of them literary fiction folk who tend to look down on most everything. I do, however, see their point. They say things like, "Every month is national novel writing month." True that novel writing isn't about word count. It starts off that way for the beginning writer and I think NaNoWriMo gives a great deal of people something to show for their effort. It's the finish line of a long race. I was like that at the beginning of my novel writing. It was all about the word count. Eventually it was about finishing the arc of the narrative and that felt less like a sprint (which is what NaNoWriMo is anyway, a literary sprint) than about getting to the finishing point. Most NaNoWriMo participants, I assume, "win" with their 50,000th or so word. Finishing a novel, however, actually bringing the plot line to its end point, is only accomplished by 90% of people who begin writing novels, or so I've been told. Well, I did that and I succeeded with a failed novel. Then I went into training to finish a successful novel and that took years, far longer than a 50,000-word drafting sprint, far longer than simply finishing a narrative.

As of this writing over a billion and a half words have been written by NaNoWriMo participants. 1,500,000,000+. Wow! I don't say that out of awe, but out of reserved experience. Word counts don't mean jack without the necessary grunt work that comes after. This is probably what the literary snobs are getting after. I am participating because it was convenient for me, because I had finished my other novel, but also because I promised myself (and then later an agent) that I wouldn't submit one novel to literary agents until I had at least 50,000 words of the next drafted. I had this notion in my mind as I have been watching the career trajectories of so many writers of my generation. A poorly selling or poorly received first novel can kill a career; then the subsequent too-long in coming second novel can bury it.

It's November 17th. I have only 14 days to write a little less than 35,000 words to win NaNoWriMo. In addition to cheating on NaNoWriMo, I am also failing. Failing with a seemingly successful novel. So much for prescriptions.

(Almost) Too Cool for Homeschool- Vocabulary Lists

2010-11-15T15:38:00.004-05:00

I have been getting a lot of hits for vocabulary words for certain works. I have vocabulary lists for certain works that I've done up myself. I am willing to share, but they're pretty extensive, so I don't know about sharing them all online.

I have, for instance, a 600+ word vocabulary list for The Hobbit. Here's an example of Chapter 1-

The Hobbit

Chapter 1 Vocabulary

remarkable- worthy of

attention, noticeable

absurd- without good sense,

silly

discreetly- carefully and

without notice

luxurious- extremely

comfortable and at a

great expense

queer- strange or odd

immovably- not able to be

moved

prosperous- wealth and

success

extraordinary- very unusual

or remarkable

unsuspecting- feeling no

suspicion or not

expecting any danger

braces- suspenders to hold up

pants

laburnums- small, yellow

flowered shrub

twilight- the time between

daylight and darkness

prosy- lacking imagination

profitable- able to make

money from

scuttled- ran a short distance

quickly

flustered- upset

tremendous- very great in

amount, scale, or

intensity

throng- crowd

depredations- laying waste

bewildered- to be confused

bewuthered- confused (made up word)

awkward- causing difficulty

or inconvenience,

abnormal

immensely- to a great extent

haughty- proud

detachable- removable

larders- place where food is stored

flummoxed- confused

wretched- very bad

confusticate- confuse (made up word)

bebother- thoroughly annoy

unpressing- something that

does not require

immediate attention

dreadful- extremely bad

sorcerous- using magic

flickered- firelight that changes frequently

yore- a long time ago

gleaming- shining brightly

hoard- a hidden supply of

something

wrought- made using art

hilt- the handle of a weapon

meshed- to combine by

entangling

delves- digs

dale- a valley

ire- anger

frail- delicate or weak

tramp- walk heavily or

noisily

grim- black or uninviting

cunning- by using skills to

make something

fierce- very strong

jealous- wanting what another

has

plundering- stealing things

and goods

kindling- small sticks used to

make a fire

shuddered- to tremble

fetch- to go for and bring back

conspirator- one who

schemes secretly

audacious- bold, daring, rash

counselor- a person who

gives advice, an adviser

ingenious- clever, very smart

solemn- serious

estimable- worthy of esteem

or respect

excitable- easily able to be

excited

poetical- imagined like a

poem

exaggeration- to make

something out to be

bigger or better than it really is

descendant- family member

born later

reviving- recovering

burglar- entering a place to

commit a crime (usually

stealing)

reference- mentioning

something

dignity- worthy of honor or

respect

assure- make someone sure of

something

expert- having a great deal of

skill or knowledge about

something

huddled- crowd together and

closely

parchment- animal skin used

for writing

rune- letters of an ancient

Germanic alphabet

devouring- to eat hungrily

and quickly

alters- to change

scarce- not many of, in small

number

blunt- not sharp

legendary- very famous, of a

legend

mock- make fun of

obstinately- stubbornly

prudent- having wisdom and

judgment

recommendation- to put

forward someone or

something as suitable

remuneration- pay for

service

immensely- to a great extent

reverence- deep respect for

someone or something

mortal- living thing that can

die

apprentices- people who

learn a trade from

experts

handsomely- generously, well

marvelous- causing great

wonder, extraordinary

singed- burned lightly

greedy- selfish desire for

wealth or power

heir- someone who can or will

inherit from another

necromancer- sorcerer

witless- having lost the ability to think

stowed- put or packed away

I have some for Junior Great Books Series 3, Book 1 (some with definitions, some not). I have some vocabulary words for the textbooks we use.

So, if you would like copies of these, find my e-mail and drop me some lines or publish a comment here and I'll get them to you.

Friday Fail

2010-11-05T05:42:00.002-04:00

I'm novel drafting, new novel drafting, and I don't wanna blog. So I'm not gonna.

Novel Writing

2010-11-03T12:09:00.002-04:00

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. I had once tried it and found that I was "losing language" for the sake of word count. I must've grown as a writer since my last attempt as I'm still getting the language down and not only meeting the word count goals, but exceeding it. As of right now, I have 8,500 freshly drafted words. By midnight my time tonight, I'm technically only supposed to need 5,000.

Mind you, I already had 25,000ish words of this novel already drafted. Sometimes the miring work of revision gets to me and I just want to draft new shit. So, while I was working on revising (and revising, and revising, and revising) the other novel, I put some time in on drafting a different one.

I don't know if I'll succeed and "win" NaNoWriMo. I really don't care. I'm making significant headway on the next project and that, alone, feels good enough.

So, for all my fellow drafting NaNoWriMo participants and all my friends who are in revision/finishing phases, think of Dory from Finding Nemo, think of her singing, "Just keep swimming" and replace swimming with writing!

Fashion Eye-Candy

2010-10-29T05:45:00.001-04:00

So much of my day is devoted to words and language that, frankly, I sometimes get sick of it. I get up and write words and worry about language (and grammar and perfect adjectives and apt metaphors and fresh similes). I read words and organize them and write some more of them for the sake of my kids' homeschool. I read them for pleasure and for work.

When my eyes hurt from words, I'm even willing to wash the dishes, sweep the floor, do the laundry to give them a break. Sometimes, though, I deal with language so much, so often, I just want something that has nothing to do with it. I want to look at something that doesn't have words. That's just images and reaction and eye-candy. I look at clothes and plan outfits (some I don't even buy) just to get away from language and get my mind working in a different way- (I do this with home design and architecture, too, but just don't blog about it....yet). And blogging about fashion forces me to reroute my brain on a frequent basis. A nice, creative outlet that doesn't mean much of anything. Aren't we all in danger of taking ourselves too seriously? So, some fashion eye-candy...

The latest issue of InStyle magazine has a great portion of its contents devoted to online resources and one such resource is Weardrobe in which (mostly) normal fashionistas post photographs of their outfits. It's a great site to get ideas and inspiration.

If you are style impaired, Weardrobe is a good place to browse and get visceral visual impressions. Do you like a look? Love it? Dislike a look? Hate it?

From their featured street stylists, I had definite positive reactions to:

Selective Potential

AtlanticPacific

LuluLetty

Most of all, District of Chic

Though her tastes are far too upscale for me. I can't abide by paying the equivalent of half of my mortgage payment for a pair of shoes. Or even 1/3 or 1/4 for that matter. Still, if you could go vintage with some of the pieces (like these boots) it might be a more doable look for those who aren't upper middle class.

I did not like "Sudden Nostalgia" by Accessory of Crime because the mishmash of layers, the longish coat over the very short cropped cardigan over the long, untucked (and wrinkled! WRINKLED!!!) shirt over the flouncy miniskirt.

A trend I saw quite often on this site was the pairing of heels with socks of various lengths. It may be my age- 37- but I soooo don't like this look.

It brings to mind one of three things for me. One- the woman is hiding her cankles and is tired of long pants, boots, cuffed tights, or wearing shoes like this-

Two- the woman is trying for the Lolita look. Three- she's trying to invoke her inner Catholic school girl.

Another trend I noticed were several outfits trying to dress up shorts.

Don't really like this look either, truth be told. I don't know that shorts really can be dressed up too much. Also, you know since I'm 37 and all, I remember Singles when it came out and this look has Janet written all over it. I've learned from Project Runway, though, that when the young designers do the 1980s without knowing their doing the 1980s (most of them weren't alive or were still toddling about when shoulder pads and neon colors were in) that it's okay (somehow). So, maybe this gal's ahead of the curve, doing 1992/1993 while everyone else is still in the 1980s.

I was happy to see so many hats on this site. I so want hats to be back and stay.

If you have a career that deals so concertedly in one area- like writing- do you find yourself indulging in completely unrelated activities just to give your mind a break while still keeping it stimulated? My Chemist husband is prone to looking at art on the internet, so I know it's not just me.

Just North of Here- A Photo Essay

2010-10-27T05:35:00.001-04:00

The weather is warm, but the leaves are falling fast. We head north to well worn paths.

We trek up a mountain top
The same one that busted our butts two winters ago
But this time it's fall
And the joke's on the leaves

My girls are growing fast and I pause to capture
Their fleeting girlhood

They all three blaze on
Down the trail

And disappear around a bend

The moss clings to the rock path

Thick and forgiving as a carpet
Cliche, but too true,

Isaac and I pause to observe the lichen

Eating through a conglomerate rock

We hike on
To where the trees thin

And boulders litter the landscape
As though Hobbit giants
Have left off their rock hurling
For the time being

We take a different trail

The one with the waterfalls

And here, at the bottom of a mountain,
The trees still hold most of their leaves
And let their true colors be seen

And a dead, decaying tree

Is a work of art

Kitchen Creek

Carves this mountain side
Better than a butcher knife
Into waterfalls
Which tumble down
And down
To Fishing Creek
And down further still
To the Susquehanna

Which Shoshana playfully calls
The Squishyanna

And down further still
It goes
To the Chesapeake Bay
And still it flows
Until the Atlantic

We leave the trails behind

And head toward home

But we have to stop

At the pumpkin patch

With the picturesque barn

And the farmworkers warn us
Of the truck spreading rye seed
"You leave the pumpkins?" I ask.
"They're not the right size."

Grown for Wal-Mart
The odd ones
Get left behind
To rot above the fresh-sown rye

And this oblong fellow

Just wants to be adopted,
Brought home,
And transformed
Into stew
Or renamed anew
Into Jack O'Latern

We stop once more
This time
At the Twin Covered Bridges

And I think Vermont
Doesn't have it all
When it comes to fall
For these two are the only twins
In the whole of the country
So says the brochures awaiting at both ends

We drive around this ridge
And through the valley beyond
To where we live
And where the next ridge south
Obscures the horizon

(Almost) Too Cool for Homeschool- We Still Educate Children by Batches

2010-10-26T06:34:00.002-04:00

"We still educate children by batches...Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are? It's like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture." ~ Sir Ken Robinson

Resale Well

2010-10-22T06:49:00.006-04:00

I've posted before about my failure with retail and part of that, too, was a resale failure. I live, however, in a podunk place and have lived in a podunk place or two for the past eight years. Resale can be a failure in such places.

If, however, you live in or near a major metropolitan area, resale or consignment, can be fabulous.

The notion of consignment stores first took seed within me in high school, after I read a novel. A novel with an English protagonist who wore designer clothes she got on the cheap at consignment shops. No one was wiser for her discounted garb. I thought this was great, but there wasn't the sort of consignment bounty in Lake Charles, Louisiana as there was in London, England.

However, when I went to visit my Aunt Jane in Dallas, I hit the consignment shops with excitement. That's where I got my pair of Ferragamo boots for $50.

Since that first purchase, I didn't find the sort of consignment glory that was Dallas/Fort Worth oil money.

Consignment stores, however, have come of age and I learned this when Judy took me around Portland.

At Red Light Clothing, which was nearly too hipster twee for me, I got this dress for $13.

At Buffalo Exchange, however, I hit consignment gold. These stores are located in lots of different cities.

For less than a $100 bucks, I got all of the following:

An Odille shirt, which is a brand often carried at Anthropologie.

A Bebe dress.

And the piece de resistance-

Which is soooo up my alley what with the bold colors, eye-catching print, and nature theme.

The advantage of these sorts of consignment stores (over thrifts like Salvation Army and Goodwill) is that the clothing has been vetted. Indeed, at the Buffalo Exchange, I saw many of the same necklaces behind the counter. They were obviously buying a specific look for their customers.

Still, my first love remains the Salvation Army. We were driving down to the library when we passed by our local Sal Val and this was hanging in the window:

One of the few landscapes that has ever struck a visual heart chord within me.

So, we decided to stop in. Besides, Isaac'd been asking for some long-sleeved shirts. I also lucked out and found this funky little skirt.

Sandy Starkman skirt in patchwork suede with shiny rainbow swirly embroidery. The sort of funky piece I'm all up into.

Had I waited a day, the $4.99 price tag would have dropped 50%, but I was feeling generous and bought it on the spot.

The painting? $7.99. It's 3 1/2 by 2 1/4 feet. The frame alone is worth $50 or more...

Like the Play Group...

2010-10-20T12:11:00.002-04:00

...I dropped out of, but funnier.

I'm the tennis-playing, twin mom...for reals and in attitude.

More at Mompetition.

U.S. Constitution

2010-10-19T16:44:00.003-04:00

Also unaware of the 13th amendment, Christine O'Donnell keeps a slave in her basement. ;-0

Crickets and Tumbleweeds

2010-10-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

I haven't written about writing since...July and that was only to say how much I wanted to clear out my laptop's files. Last time I actually wrote about writing was on June 21st, nearly a full four months ago.

I have been writing. Not just blogging, but slow, steady progress with my fiction. I went to Tin House conference, met a whole slew of people who inspire me/commiserate with me, and feel better about my work than I have in a long time, maybe ever. Which is probably one reason that I don't write about writing much anymore. It seems the novice in me wanted to talk about/write about writing a whole lot.

My progress has been slow because football season is kicking my ass. Last year I think we thought it was the whole cyberschool immersion and then bona fide homeschool curriculum planning and writing flurry we went through at this time last year. Now we know it's mostly because football season is a major commitment and time suck. I don't think football season, which lasts from the first week of August to the fourth week in October, is a time to finish up a novel. It's definitely a time for drafting, because drafting doesn't require the same sort of grueling analysis and self-criticism that revises does. But too bad, so sad, I'll have to wait until next year to put that in place.

In the meantime, I plan on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Participate. I don't hope to "win" because I would rather have a 1,000 to 1,500 good to great words a day than 1,666.667+ fair to middling (or even craptactular) words a day.

If anyone else is doing it, lemme know and we'll buddy up. I'm always a superwriter when I have the pressure of performing.

On the Menu- Crepes

2010-10-18T13:40:00.011-04:00

When we lived in Germany, crepes were one of the staples of my diet. If it weren't for crepes, parboiled rice (the only available), LaChoy sweet and sour sauce, Sprite, Twix, corn chips, and a funky salsa made with beets, I (and subsequently my children as I was pumping breast milk and/or (also and/and for the double duty of doing both at the same time) pregnant for the duration of my time there) would have starved.

The first time I had crepes was in fourth grade when my French teacher made some for our class...right there in our classroom. She, however, used a crepe maker. It looked like this:

Which I found here. You use this by placing the dark side into the crepe batter, the appliance being upside down and then flipping it over. It even seemed weird to me at the time. If you prefer the normal, old fashion way, read on.

Crepes don't require much of anything. Some flour, some eggs, a good pan, and some milk (even if it came in an unrefrigerated box). So I made them. A. Lot.

Here's the recipe, which will make seven large crepes, or more of a smaller size:

2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup flour.

Beat eggs and then beat in milk until frothy.

Add in flour. GRADUALLY. The key to unlumpy flour mixtures is two fold. First, always add solid into liquid. Second, always add a little bit at a time- I usually shoot for one to two tablespoons of flour at a time.

It helps to be ambidextrous so that you can add flour and whisk at the same time. I wasn't always ambidextrous (and I'm not really still, except when it comes to cooking), but cooking a lot and trying to save time means I can usually pour, measure out, etc. with one hand while the other is whisking, stirring, swirling, what have you.

With a pan that has heated on medium/medium high heat add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of crepe mix and rotate the pan (it's all in the wrist) until you have most of the pan covered and the swirling pretty much ceases because the batter's been evenly distributed over the pan.

Let that one cook, turn it over, and then throw it away.

Yes, throw it away. Don't ask me why, but the first crepe never comes out right. It's as though the crepe god requires a sacrifice in order to ensure good quality crepes for the remainder of the batter. If there's a more logical, scientific explanation, I'm all ears.

For the second (and subsequent) crepes, I look for the edges to curl up.

Then I use a very thin butter knife to loose the outer edges to enable me to flip it over. I don't really flip it over. I just grab the edges and turn it over. Some are skilled food flippers. I am not. I do what I can.

A good crepe will look golden brown on the first side that was cooked.

And have nice brown spots on its other side once it's done.

Crepes are so freaking versatile, too! Sweet or savory. They can be lit with alcohol-burning flames a la Crepes Suzette. In Germany, I preferred to fill mine with plain yogurt sweetened with honey, but I've seen them filled with jams and jellies, spinach and cheese mixtures, lemon juice and sugar (which is the English way as well as calling them pancakes not crepes), and my kids prefer them the American way with maple syrup. Crepes don't, however, keep well once made. So eat up.