Hope, the thing with feathers

I had to chuckle, reading this lovely post by Molly of a Foothill Home Companion, because normally I would totally agree with her, but today my thoughts took a different turn.

I was actually ruminating on the times when we parents, we large people who try to give wings to the dreams of the smaller people, have to say "no." And sometimes, we really have very little choice in the matter.

At tennis this morning, my friend Lisa was accosted by her five year old son, vociferously stating (and re-stating) his intent to build a boat in which to take his friends (including my willing daughter) for a ride in the turtle pond. And what was he going to use to build this boat? Sticks. That's it.

I watched the tension mounting as she first humored his idea, then tried to gently break the news that they were going to have to leave the park today without building a four-passenger boat. Despite her best effort, a certain degree of hysteria ensued. This was TREASON! How could the adult world FAIL TO COMPREHEND THE GENIUS OF THIS IDEA!?

(Note: Lisa spent an hour and a half yesterday helping her son recreate the house from UP with a cardboard box and a bunch of helium balloons. Can we agree she's a dedicated and kindhearted mom?)

Oh, friends, how I did relate. With a couple of my kids, I've been through the same wash cycle: lather, rinse, repeat. As much as I try to say yes, (or my personal fallback: "Let's ask Daddy to help you with that pairs of stilts/fishing rod/fill-in-the-blank you want to make!") there are moments when we just run up against the laws of physics, or money, or time, or human capability, or hey, even Mama's patience.

(Once I literally had to drive my then four year old to a John Deere dealer so he could verify in person, man to man with the bewildered clerk, that buying a full-sized backhoe for a proposed project would not fit his budget.)

And we're left to compassionately pop the balloon of these grandiose visions, gently catching the shards and fashioning them into the kind of hope that makes our dreamers dust themselves off and come back for more.

I think it's finally fall

Signs that fall has arrived in central Texas:

(Ever used one of these? It's a foundational step for all sorts of apple-y desserts, or in this case, pioneer-esque dried apple rings. We used one all the time when I was growing up, after Apple Picking, and would often try to jump rope with the long, wet curling strings of apple peel. This is the way Yankee children try to go gently into that long dark night known as the New England Winter.)

Fall here does not entail raking giant piles of leaves to jump and frolic in (oh! the smell of fallen leaves!) or golden days of sharp, clean light that feel like biting into a crisp, tangy apple straight off the bough, followed by great dinnertime gusts that gather you in to hearth and home.

It does mean emerging from summertime hibernation to spend hours in the back yard, urges to forsake the daily lists to ramble in the woods somewhere, and trees dropping their burdens of pecans, acorns, browning foliage, as migrating butterflies swarm seemingly everywhere.

Around here, one token still remains, holding out on us like that last Macoun dangling out of reach. One sign that crisper days yet await us.

The Aspiring Professor still needs to get out The Sweater.

Throw this together for dinner

First, I have to tell you a little story.

A few months ago, I was complaining to my mother-in-law (a hobby of mine) about the chore of meal planning. It was a sunny, somnolent Sunday afternoon, and the child in mine just wanted to curl up in a sunbeam and take a nap, while the tyrannical grownup was insisting that if I didn't plan the week's menu and shop accordingly, did I really think it was just going to plan itself? Huh? Did I?

My mother-in-law graciously refrained from pointing out how this was a problem unimaginable to a large percentage of the planet, a symptom unique to the overabundant time and place in which we live.

Instead, she dug into the mental Rolodex and emerged with a file called "Cooking for the Family," dusted it off, and presented one of her Ideas from a Happily Organized Household.

Here's the idea: Keep a list of thirty meals you can make well and your family will relish. Or choke down. Let's not get picky. Then, just pick things off the master list and rotate.

I adapted, making a list of twenty, because Sunday night is always omelette night and there's always a chance that some night of the month, we just might eat somewhere else. Also, I like to experiment from my Everyday Food magazine, or a food blog, or the recipe list that comes from our Greenling produce box every Wednesday. I'm all about hope and change.

I'm loving the list. No longer do I stare slack-jawed at the calendar, waiting to be hit upside the head with a meal idea, as if I haven't been cooking for twelve years. Most of the meals on the list are winners with most members of the family. Nothing takes too long to cook. There's a delightful mesclun of meat, fish and vegetarian meals. And the list tells me where exactly in my cookbook collection or bedraggled recipe binder to locate the entree in question. Yes, we can.

Tonight, however, I hit the open road, adapting a recipe from my Greenling box, which this week contained serrano peppers. Here's what I came up with. Minimal stove time, minimal dishes, maximum yum factor. Merry Birthday to you.

Ingredients:

1 rotisserie chicken

1.5 cups sour cream

1.5 cups mayonnaise

4-5 serrano peppers, roughly chopped

Juice of 2 limes

4 garlic cloves (or 1 TBSP minced garlic)

salt

pepper

Cook 1.5 cups quinoa (had a big, protein-packed bag from Costco, happily gluten-free) or a box of short pasta, such as rigatoni.

Blend sauce ingredients. Shred rotisserie chicken, and warm together with sauce over low heat until warm but not boiling. Serve chicken sauce over quinoa over pasta.

This served our family of five plus two friends. Wish I had delectable photos to tantalize you, but alas, my little camera takes shoddy indoor evening shots. Especially in a yellow formica kitchen. Yes, I do all my cooking bathed in a golden glow.

Bon appétit!

Play me that sweet, sweet music

Y'all, I've found the fountain of youth.

On your list of Things To Do Before You Die should be this one: Drive a car containing two nine-year-old boys through heavy Friday afternoon traffic.

It will either:

a) take years off your life -- hey, cheaper than smoking!

or

b) take years off your age -- hey, cheaper than sloughing off dead cells at a day spa!

As you inch toward a friend's birthday party, plotting to spill the contents of your van upon the poor, unsuspecting host mother, your passengers might:

1. Sing loud greetings of "Merry Birthday!" and "Happy Christmas!" which they will find SO UPROARIOUS.

2. Sing contorted versions of "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells ..." which they will also find SO, SO UPROARIOUS. This will occupy a good twenty minutes, as they attempt in vain to sing, in sync, the entire song without blanking on any of the words. You will be tempted to assist them at times. That's where the years-off-your-age part comes in.

3. Discuss their invisible buttons, known as "ON," "ON ON," and "ON ON ON" (representing varying levels of hyperactivity). Demonstrations of each stage will be given. Need I even tell you that there is no "OFF" button?

At some point, you might find yourself wishing it were legal to drive while plugging your iPod into one ear and enjoying a more zenlike playlist, or something more intellectually fulfilling. You might wish they would allow you to listen to NPR for a while, or even Story of the World.

But then, you may as well surrender. Surrender to the sweet, burbling, at times maniacal soundtrack of a happy childhood.

Resistance is futile.

(Oh, and might I add? Doing all this with serenity could redeem you from the hypothetical scenario in which you left the house that morning and drove three and half blocks before realizing that you'd left one of your children at home. Can I get an Amen?)

Famous People

So my sister, the baby of the family that is, texted me a short while ago to alert me to the fact that she had just brushed shoulder, more or less, with Jenna Fischer, a.k.a. Pam from The Office, at a bookstore at the LAX airport.

Or should I say, Pam from The Office just brushed shoulders with MY SISTER?! Maybe she's texting Jim about it right now. ("OMG, saw tall cute curly-haired Harvard grad browsing the recent bestsellers! LOL!")

Have you ever run into anyone famous? Several years ago, I had my own airport encounter when, while boarding a connecting flight to Austin in Chicago, I turned to glance at the back of the line and there was none other than Ms. Sandra Bullock. No kidding. She lives here, you know.

Probably she was hanging out at the caboose so as to avoid the goopy stares from other passengers walking past her seat in first class as they headed for the cattle cars. But sure enough, there was the gate agent, asking for her autograph. (I didn't have the boldness, in case you wondered.)

Well, guess what, my friends? Due to some weather-related issue, our plane sat on the runway in Chicago for about an hour and a half. And no doubt Ms. Bullock was plied with a couple of apologetic cocktails during her unacceptable wait, but she still had to sit there, enduring a delay just like the rest of us. Weather and control towers just aren't impressed by celebrity, it seems.

It just made me think. Sure, it's exciting to run into these faces we see only on the screen or the magazine covers at the grocery store checkout, mostly because I think we subconsciously doubt that they actually exist in the flesh. But it's also a good reminder that these people have to wait in lines just like us, have to put their jeans on one leg at a time, have their toast fall to the floor jam side down just as often as we do.

And speaking of such things, I just finished reading (a phrase which here means "gave my children minimal attention while taking abnormally long bathroom breaks and cooking with one hand so I could keep my nose buried in its pages") The Actor and the Housewife: A Novel
by Shannon Hale, one of my current favorite authors (I love both her adult and YA fiction (oh, and her website)). Anyone (besides Anne) read it? What do you think? Plausible premise, devoted housewife falling into a friendship with a Hollywood actor? Plausible for the relationship to remain platonic?

Sounds farfetched, and I'm not sure I totally buy it, but once I got past the style, which was breezier than her more poetic YA novels, I just fell in love with Becky Jack, the heroine. The way she dedicates herself to the happiness of her husband and children so wholeheartedly while keeping alive this creative spark (she writes screenplays) and a friendship completely outside the sphere in which she lives, the sphere most us completely relate to ... that part, I think, had me at hello. The way she crafts a life that manages to be ordinary, self-sacrificing, even at some points (no spoilers!) tragic, and yet retain this corner of mystery, this one thread running in stark contrast to the tapestry of domestic life -- it's intriguing.

I do all my own stunts

Hair stunts, that is.

Survivor

My strong, courageous sister and her teammates (husband, friend) ran the Race for the Cure early Sunday morning.

I watched. I cheered. I forgot to wear some pink (thought about toting the nearly-empty pink water bottle from my car though!). I ran the final stretch with them, outside the barrier. (People probably thought I didn't understand the nature of the race course.) I fought back a few tears, especially seeing the runners with "In Memory Of" signs taped to their backs.

Next year, I'm hoping to run. Maybe with an "In Celebration Of" sign on MY back.