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Wordless Wednesday ~ OCD Verson
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Freedom
In Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom is something devoutly to be wished, and yet turns out to be a trap in and of itself. It turns out, over and over again, that the trappings and constraints of life are preferable from freedom from these trappings. The story is told in the third person, telling the stories of Patty, Walter, Joey, and Richard, as well as their families around them. Patty is the damaged basketball star daughter of a WASPy NY family, who travels to college in Minnesota on a sports scholarship. Walter is the good son who helps his parents to tend to their motel on weekends and summers, which his…
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Thank You, 2010
I know that 2010 was a very difficult year for some of you. Some of my friends had a horrible year, full of divorce or death or almost death or loss of jobs, or several of these things all at once. I do not in any way want to discount their pain. Some years truly suck. But some of my friends had a joyous years of birth and babies and marriage and engagements and health. I want to recognize that as well. That while some people are suffering mightily, others are celebrating and living a life of happiness and joy. And when you’re in the midst of despair, it somehow…
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Life After Yes
There is something about mothers. Whether your own or someone else’s, whether Northern or Southern, liberal or conservative, they spill bits of wisdom as they walk. They just know better. Depending on the day, this can be infuriating or enlightening. Quinn is a 26 year old Manhattan lawyer who has just become engaged to Sage, a banker from down south. They’re living in Manhattan, and the time has come to plan their wedding. Which seems like it should be a happy time, but this is early 2002, in New York, and Quinn’s father was killed in the attack on September 11. Sage is a caring man, and gives Quinn a…
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Split Pea and Ham Soup
My friend Cherry often makes ‘lucky’ food on New Years Day. Seems like it’s often black eyed peas in some form or another. I remembered that this year, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had black eyed peas. I started looking for recipes, and decided I wasn’t sure. So I looked for other lucky foods, and it seems like the color green is good (the color of money, hence prosperity), pork and fish are good (because they move forward), and chicken and lobster are bad (because they scratch or walk backwards), and you want to go forward in the new year. Also, beans and peas are good luck (perhaps…
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Fall-off-the-bone-tender Baby Back Ribs
(Picture found along with a totally different recipe, here) Ted found a recipe for homemade barbecue sauce on foodnetwork.com, and decided to try it with chicken on the grill. Um, it was amazing. Truthfully, I think it was the best barbecue chicken I’ve ever had. We’ll definitely be making more of this sauce. He got the recipe from Giada, here. Balsamic BBQ sauce 1 cup balsamic vinegar 3/4 cup ketchup 1/3 cup brown sugar 1 garlic clove, minced 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan and stir until all the ingredients are…
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The Whirl of Gaiety
This last week has been one of fun and frivolity…at least such as a couple of middle aged folks with a teen daughter living in the suburbs could expect. And actually, that means a very nice week indeed. Saturday, of course, was Christmas. We slept in a bit, which befits the teen daughter thing. Those of you with young children have this to look forward to…the day when you have more trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve than your child(ren) do(es). We woke her up at 9ish. We had a nice morning here, with gifts and omelets and phone calls with family. Then we took showers and got dressed and went…
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The Last Bridge
Two days after my father had a massive stroke my mother shot herself in the head. Her suicide was a shock – not the fact that she killed herself but the way in which she did it. It was odd that my mother chose such a violent end to her own violent life. For someone who had endured years of torture at my father’s hand, I thought she would choose a more quiet way of leaving. Perhaps she would take pills and put herself to bed in a silk nightgown, or she’d walk naked into the ocean at sunset. Instead, she cleaned the house, changed the linens, stuffed the freezer…
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Room
A 19 year old college student is approached on her way to the library one day, a man asking for help with his seriously ill dog. She goes with him, and ends up spending the next seven years of her life as his captive in an 11×11 shed in his back yard, a shed that has been fortified and soundproofed, fitted with heat and running water. She fights and is badly beaten. Tries to escape and is mocked. Struggles and screams and sends signals into the night sky that no one sees. She sleeps 16 hours a day, spends her waking hours trying to escape, watching TV, and dreading his…
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Christmas thoughts…
For years, Maya wanted to make a gingerbread house. She would ask, and I would think about the mess, the candy, my lack of crafty skills, the mess, and the what-does-one-do-with-it-after aspect, and say, hmmm….maybe. But never get around to it. A local supermarket has gingerbread house parties, where you can come and pay to make one there, which seemed a perfect solution to me, but I could never seem to get there and sign her up in time. By the time I found out about the party, it was either fully booked or fully over. So I would think, maybe next year, and feel a twinge guilty for not…
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Pete and repeat are in a boat…
Pete falls out, who’s left? Repeat! OK, so for a repeat performance, here’s a picture of Maya on Santa’s lap circa 1996, when she was 9 months old. If the picture looks familiar, I posted it about 3 years ago on this very blog. Chrissy and Glinda both reminded me of this photo…Chrissy when she posted a picture of her poor baby freaking out on Santa’s lap, here, and Glinda when she asked about the cuteness of Santa photos, here. In this picture, Santa is a family friend dressed up, not a guy at the mall, which is probably why she’s not screaming. Also, she’s young. Had she sat in…
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What’s new, pussycat?
(famous black cat image, which I found here) I’m sorry, little blog, for neglecting you so. It’s not that I don’t care about you, it’s just that I don’t care about you as much as I used to. Harsh? Indeed. And I’ve noticed that many of my friends’ blogs are similarly neglected. Not sure what to do about it, but one option might be to, perhaps, come visit once in awhile, write here, and make more of an effort to go visit my blog friends. Sigh. So, aside from pancakes I made weeks ago, what’s new around here? Let’s see… Today is St. Nicholas Day. St. Nicholas was known for…
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Fluffy Pancakes
A few months ago, I posted Amuirin’s buttermilk pancake recipe, which I’ve been making and we’ve been enjoying quite a bit. But I was thinking about it the other day, and how they aren’t big fluffy pancakes. Looking online for recipes for buttermilk pancakes, it seems that some of them are kind of flat, esp if they don’t have any baking powder in the recipe. So I started looking around for other kinds of pancake recipes, when I remembered that my fried Michelle from Scribbit makes pancakes a lot, and has her recipe up as well. So I went and checked it out, and I see that it calls for…
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Really, Really good chicken and bread salad
I have a cookbook that has a recipe for the famous Zuni Cafe roast chicken, with bread salad. I’ve tried it once or twice, and it’s good…but something seemed a bit off. Well, the other day I was deciding what to make for dinner, and I didn’t know where the cookbook was, so I went looking online. I found a lot of versions, but this one had the most gorgeous pictures ever, and she raved about it so much, that I decided to give it a try. She’s altered the recipe a bit, but only in very slight ways. Mostly just streamlining the recipe a bit. (Comparing her recipe, and…
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Potpourri
I think my friend Cherry put it best when she saw this Baskin Robbins Thanksgiving themed ice cream cake. “I don’t know if I want it, or if I want to throw up on it.” Nicely said. Which segues so very well into politics these days, and a reminder of Will Rogers’ famous quote, “I’m not a member of any organized political party…I’m a democrat!” Gah. It sure feels like that some days. Pelosi has been an amazingly effective Speaker, what with health care and so on, and yet people blow her off and say the election is her fault. Obama has accomplished quite a bit in his first two…