Photo credit: Dana Tentis
The last couple of days we’ve been dealing with some upset doggie tummies. Not sure of the cause but both are on a special tummy diet – pumpkin, sweet potatoes, rice, little bit of brown gravy. Both seem to like it and appear to be on the road to recovery.
What foods do you like when you’re feeling under the weather?
Happy Year of the Rat!
When I adopted YA from China, there was an enormous amount of support for the new family I was creating. There were adoption magazines, online forums and a very active local chapter of Families with Children from China. You know me, I dived right in, learning about traditional holidays in China as well as taking part in gatherings with other adoptive families and even subscribing to two adoptive magazines. We even traveled to Illinois once to go to an adoptive family conference when YA was 3.
I dropped the magazines early on; they were really depressing, overwhelmingly focused on all the negative aspects of adoption and very few of the joys. Then when YA was about five and I was signing us up for another “culture camp” (these were annual weekends), she said “Do we have to go? They’re boring.” So that was the end of culture camps and big FCC gatherings.
When she was in middle school I was informed that the Chinese delicacies that I had taught myself to cook for CNY weren’t that great. Could we just have take-out instead? Okey dokey.
Then when she was in high school and I was in a whirlwind of cleaning before Chinese New Year (it’s traditional to really clean the house before CNY so the kitchen god and goddess give a good report on your household to the emperor of heaven), she said “You know, I don’t really care about this, so if you’re doing it for me, you don’t have to.”
So here I am, several years later, still caring about this holiday that I embraced when she was a child. I still have little figurines of the kitchen god and goddess; I still try to get the house spiffed up before the new year and I still have a my best friend and her hubby over for a nice take out dinner to celebrate the new year. I don’t put out a lot of decorations, although there are a few things I’ll put out. I had a toilet tank topper made from some fun Asian-designed fabric last year, so that’s a must and a great dragon flag for the front of the house. I do make a few CNY cards. YA just rolls her eyes.
What will you be up to while I’m celebrating the Year of the Rat?
Amid all the insanity this week, the saddest news to me is the passing of Terry Jones.
I discovered Monty Python when I was in high school. This was before the television show but I had all their record albums. One of favorites was Eric the Half a Bee:
Another favorite was An Elk:
By the time I got to Carleton, the television show was airing on Sunday nights and I was a founding member of the 4th Burton Penguin Society:
We got together every Sunday night to watch the show and drink Fosters (do not ask me why we thought we needed to drink Australian beer while watching an English comedy show – I don’t remember at all). All of us in the “club” had a small ceramic penguin; I still have mine and keep in my studio
When Monty Python and the Holy Grail came out, I laughed until I cried and went back to the theatre three times in the next couple of weeks. I have it on DVD but it loses a bit on the small screen, especially the moose credits at the beginning. YA doesn’t even begin to understand the appeal of Monty Python. But I loved the irreverence, the silliness, the fun graphics and the craziness of some of the sketches. This was a great team. It was sad to lose Graham Chapman too soon and now Terry Jones. I gave all the record albums to tim last year because I didn’t have a turntable anymore, but I am enjoying the tv shows that are running these days and, of course, you can find a lot of it on youtube, but it’s not quite the same as crowding around a small black and white tv set in a dorm room on 4th Burton, seeing them for the first time.
Who has made you laugh over the years?
I’ve just had one of my favorite kinds of weekends. No social engagements, no particular errands, no particular chores. Started out with snowblowing early Saturday morning so that YA could get to work; although it’s technically a chore and it was cold, I had fun using my new snowblower (well, new to me anyway) even though it was a little hard to get it started the first time it was still dark and I had to kinda figure out by touch where the choke and throttle were. Did my Saturday morning chores (change sheets, water plants) and by then it was all of 7:30. So except for taking breaks to throw more laundry in and have meals, I spent the entire day in my studio! I’ve had a pile of stuff that I wanted to use up for a few weeks and I managed to get through it all.
Yesterday I had to snowblow out the bottom of my driveway again and when I lent the snowblower to my neighbor for a bit, I got to learn about cotter pins. Glad he broke it and not me – I would never have known what had happened and would probably have spent a lot of bucks having somebody diagnose and fix it. YA convinced me we should out for breakfast – The Lowbrow – her favorite breakfast spot. When we got home I made a big pot of broccoli cheese soup and then headed back to my studio. Overall I made 41 cards this weekend and got the studio spruced up as well.
My friend Pat calls this kind of behavior “burrowing” and I have to admit I did feel like I had hunkered down in my sweatpants and fat socks. I do enjoy my busier weekends as well, but it did feel rather nice to tune out the world for a couple of days.
What do you like to do when you’re “burrowing”?
Photo credit: Cody Black
I saw an article about the taboos of tattoos on bbc.com yesterday. We all know that tattoos are much more prevalent – almost a fashion statement these days – among the younger generations, but there is still a lingering social taboo against them. Apparently it is legal in the US (and the UK) for companies to have a “no tattoo” policy. Never occurred to me that a company would even have such a policy, much less that it would be legal!
YA has a few piercings and two tattoos. I’m not crazy about her tattoos (some style choices, some money issues) and just a few days ago we had a discussion about still being careful about tattoos and piercings until you know the acceptance level of a possible employer.
For quite a few years, I’ve fantasized about getting tattooed myself. Small, on my wrist (toward the inside), multi-colored hibiscus flower with YA’s name, in her handwriting. She knows about this plan and every now and then tries to encourage me. My guess is it will probably never happen, but you never know. I know it won’t be a problem here at my company but I might have to wait until Nonny is gone!
Knowing you could get rid of it tomorrow if you don’t like it, tell me about the tattoo you would get.
When I was getting dressed yesterday, I pulled open my sock drawer (although it’s a huge bin actually) and found a new pair of socks laying on top of the others.
Now I know for a fact that these socks belonged to YA: when she was laid up with her broken foot, I did all her laundry, including sock sorting. I really liked them and I may even have said that if she ever gets tired of them, I would take them.
I have way too many socks. Socks are like cookie cutters and flip flops in my view… as long as you don’t have a anything exactly the same, why not add to your collection. I have enough socks that I have them sorted out, with the holiday red/green socks in a separate section. This is why my sock drawer is the same size as my t-shirt drawer.
This overabundance of socks is something I recognize, in fact I told YA NOT to get me socks for Solstice this year. I really just don’t need more.
So why am I happily wearing the adopted socks today? They are comfy and warm and I love the pattern. Do I need any other reason?
What do you have too many of?
As I was walking out of the co-op the other day, I looked down to see a large splotch of rice in the parking lot. The kind of splotch that can only be achieved by having your bag of rice break open while you’re carrying it to the car (you can guess why I know this). My first thought was that the local birds would be happy but then I remembered that supposedly uncooked rice is bad for birds, which is why they throw birdseed now at weddings.
Then when I got home, I discovered that YA had received TWO “save-the-date” cards.
Wedding reminder #3 was when I was watching Cake Boss that night and one of the bakers (sorry I don’t watch this enough to know any of their names) was celebrating a milestone anniversary with a big party and a wedding cake. When the couple began to cut the cake and feed each other, I cringed, hoping they wouldn’t smash the cake into each other’s faces. I detest that.
So all these wedding reminders in one day made me think about weddings how the traditions have changed over the years. My first wedding, which was completely orchestrated by my mother, was fairly traditional. Church, gown, reception, cake (unsmashed), lots of people I didn’t know. My second wedding was the exact opposite, we met the judge at Good Earth restaurant and were married at the table with our server, Philip and the server from the next section, Sarah, as our witnesses. Honeymoon at Day tons that afternoon. I am much more fond of my Good Earth wedding memories than my traditional ones so it makes me wonder why so many brides and bridegrooms adhere so stickily to all the “musts” when getting married. Why not do something different, stretch their boundaries, find things that are meaningful instead of just traditional. Those of you with psychology degrees, any ideas?
If you were planning your wedding today, how would you like it to go? (Like all good fantasies, money is no object.)
Although I think of myself as flexible and resilient most of the time, there are some changes that I just don’t like. My friends and loved ones moving away is right up there in the “I hate this” stratosphere.
Lori and Tom live 2 doors up from me. I knew right away when I moved onto the block 29 years ago that they would be good friends. They championed me when I was divorcing wasband #2, supported me during the adoption process. Lori is a rubber stamping buddy of mine, we share reading as a passion and I’ve been drawn into one of her favorite charities, Mission Haiti. Tom more often than not does my snowblowing and now that they are moving to an apartment in Chicago, he is even giving me the snowblower. YA had a ton of hand-me-downs from their 2 daughters (which really helped my finances back then) and we did a lot of activities together when the kids were all younger, including Supper with Santa, trick-or-treating and many backyard neighborhood get-togethers. They are two of the kindest, most generous people I know.
This move to Chicago has been coming for a while. They actually rented the apartment a year ago but a health crisis kept them here until now. Their oldest is in Cincinnati with the only grandchild, Lori’s work has offices in Chicago and Tom does programming work from home, so the Windy City seemed like a good next step for them.
But it doesn’t make me happy, even if it’s good for them. I know how to use e-mail and texting and even skype, but it isn’t the same as just running a couple of houses up. So on Friday I have a chunk of time blocked on my calendar that says “cry on the sidewalk” as I fully intend to go home to wave them off as they depart Minneapolis.
Who would you have move closer (or back)?
Fortune cookies, while a fun novelty, don’t always register for me. Most of the time that YA and I have Chinese food, it is at home, delivered by our favorite place, Fresh Wok. YA loves cream cheese wontons, which I consider dessert; this combined with the fact that the fortune cookies are always at the bottom of the bag, they are usually overlooked until after we’re full.
I have some good friends who are moving this week, so this past weekend, I took Chinese take-out over to them so they would have one night when they didn’t have to cook. I decided to make it an early Chinese New Year party so brought lucky money envelopes, red paper plates/cups, the works. When I was setting things out, the fortune cookies were actually on the top of the bag so I put them each of our place settings.
Here is what mine said:
“Because of your melodic nature, the moonlight never misses an appointment.”
Lovely, although in terms of it being a fortune, all I can figure is I’d better keep being melodic or the moonlight will miss an appointment?
What fortune would YOU like to crack open?
I am not a fashionista. Not a clothes horse. Not stylish, chic, swanky, hip or trendy. If I really thought I could get away with it I would probably don sweatpants and a t-shirt every day (shorts and t-shirt in summer). Mind you, I can dress up if the occasion calls for it, but I have arranged my life over the years so that the occasion doesn’t come knocking too often.
This is a problem for YA. She is stylish, chic, swanky, hip and trendy and she cares a great deal about her clothing and her make-up. She once changed an outfit after looking in the full length mirror (in my room) because her black top and black pants didn’t “match”. I’m not making this up. This means that my schlumpy outfits offend her and she has more than once refused to leave the house with me until I change. She often has opinions about what I should wear to a function she is attending with me; she’s still young enough that she thinks other people really give a hoot and that they will somehow think less of HER if I am not dressed to the nines.
So in a weak moment on New Year’s Eve, I let her cut my hair. I hadn’t had a trim in well over a year and she had commented on this fact more than once in the last couple of weeks. I had taken a long look in the mirror earlier that day and decided that it was getting a little scraggly but I’m still not sure why I didn’t just trot myself off to Cost Cutters or Great Clips. Instead, she armed herself with two pairs of scissors, a comb and a brush and asked how much I wanted trimmed off. I told her a couple of inches and I’m sure that the new math has something to do with how much she trimmed. My “couple of inches” translated into about five inches in her world!
If I had known she would chop off that much I might not have let her do it, but I guess I trusted her a little more than I should have when discussing what a “couple of inches” means. Luckily, it’s just hair and it will grow out; I’m not seriously unhappy but it is the shortest I’ve had my hair in years.
Has your trust ever been misplaced? Or stretched to its limit?
Trail Baboon 