Bare brick and polished wood

Mabel was wide awake for THREE AND A HALF HOURS last night, alternately wailing "I caaaan't get to sleeeeeeeeep withouuuuuut boooooobboooooo" and "Reeeeeead meeeee a boooooooook", and I had the theme tune to Go, Diego, Go stuck in my head; and I was all set to rant about it at length but then it ocurred to me that just maybe it was something to do with the booster vaccinations she got yesterday, and lo, apparently a possible side effect of the Varicella vaccine is insomnia, so I'm going with that because otherwise she's been sleeping unprecedentedly well and I didn't even want to talk about that for fear of breaking the streak, so we'll just move on now...

I just made Dash an appointment for an eye exam, because I noticed that he's holding the book very close to his face when he reads, and on questioning he said that he finds it hard to make out what's on the visualizer in school (I think this is the projector thingy that saves the teacher actually writing on the board). Genetically, glasses are highly likely if not inevitable, though I hoped the kids would manage not to need them for a few more years yet. However, it would be lovely if something as simple and fixable as that suddenly turned reading and writing from a chore to a pleasure for him, and I am now fantasizing that being able to see clearly would also make him so happy that The Rage would be a thing of the past and homework would be a breeze.

Just let me dream, okay? If he needs glasses, he'll get glasses, that's all. (Not like the last time.)

****************

Meanwhile, what I was going to say...

Yesterday we had ocassion to go to the local high school, because they were offering free flu-mist vaccinations (the sort they squirt up your nose instead of an injection), and both the children needed them. I'd never been on the premises before, though I drove past it multiple times a day before we moved up the road to this house. In fact, I've never been in any American high school before.

I know high schools tend to be big, and this is a particularly big one, but I was still surprised by the memories that were kindled when we walked through the doors: not thoughts of my secondary school (grades 7 to 12), but instead a strong sense of the Arts Building in my alma mater, UCD. (That's University College Dublin, not the University of California at Davis or the University of Colorado, Denver.) Partly it was the size, but mostly it was the architecture: the late-1960s style and exposed brick made me feel that if I opened a door I'd be faced with not a classroom but a vertiginously terraced lecture theatre.

I loved the UCD Arts Block. (That's Liberal Arts, if you're American.) It was my place in the world from October 1991 till May 1995, when I left partly because I feared if I didn't go then I never would. I might have stayed, and done a master's in Spanish Linguistics, or English Lit, and ended up... well, an unemployed MA instead of an unemployed BA, I suppose. In the Arts Block, I could roam the halls with impunity and claim a sun-drenched low, wide windowsill to read in, or snooze in, or, if lucky and with boyfriend, canoodle in. From the overpriced Finnegan's Break (oh, har har) cafe to the orange lockers in the LGs, past Dramsoc at the bottom of the stairs and sashaying to the strains of the jukebox from The Trap, where those majoring in pool hung out, to giant Theatre L for my English lectures or an L&H debate on a Friday night, and upstairs again to the Modern Languages corridor where the secretary of the Spanish Department was never around if you needed her, I was on home ground.

There was a wooden set of sculptures in the middle of the building that people could sit on, or around, or arrange to meet up at. The first time I saw them they struck a particular chord, somewhere deep in my memory, and the informative plaque confirmed it: the piece is called Pangur Bán, by Imogen Stuart, and it was first displayed in Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre in 1976.

When I was three and four years old, I had regularly climbed that very sculpture, peered through its low-down spaces, found the tiny mouse hiding in a corner, delighted in stroking its smooth, cool, dark wood and laying my cheek against it - and here it was in a new location, stirring my sense memories a decade and a half later. It felt like a special, personal discovery, linking me to this new place before I'd even arrived. (Me and every other student from South County Dublin, maybe. But I don't know if they all remembered it the way I did.)

I felt like a very obvious interloper if I ever ventured into the Engineering Building, I'd only been in Ag once, and Science - despite the fact that my father had helped design it, the ugliest building on campus (it was the 60s; they couldn't help it) - was just about somewhere I was allowed be once I was dating one of its number, but the Arts (and Commerce, I suppose, grudgingly) Block was mine.

I didn't realise how right I felt there until I was about to leave. Just standing between the double set of doors at the main entrance by the "Information" desk (I use the term lightly), I knew that I couldn't hold on to it - I had to move on and make room for the students coming after me. I had no grand plans for the future; I didn't really know yet what I'd be doing in September, but it was time to go. Closing a chapter, wondering where the next one would open.

Homework, by popular demand*

*at least, one Lovely Commenter asked for it. But this is the abridged version - I took out a big wodge of irrelevant ranting and self-doubt.

**********

Oh God, Homework. I spent all afternoon yesterday stating my expectations - that Dash would start his homework now. Now after this snack. Now after this one game. Now in time to watch the TV show. As soon as dinner was done. He agreed, or said nothing, and then he just ignored it, and me, over and over and over. I threw in the towel.

I hate homework, but maybe there's more to it than that. I am the sort of person who does things first to get them out of the way: I used to eat my vegetables first so I could enjoy my dinner once they were gone; I used to do my math homework first to get it over with. To me, this seems like a good way to work, and the ethos and habit I want to pass on to my children.

But I know not everyone functions this way. (Their father did his math homework first too, but in his case because it was his favourite. I'm not sure what he did with his vegetables. Probably dropped them stealthily under the table.) Maybe Dash is just the sort of person who needs to leave things till the last minute. Maybe he'll pull spectacular all-nighters in college. Maybe he'll work up to the wire on every deadline and his work will be great because of it.

I just don't believe that can be true. How can you work up to the wire and have time to make your work as good as it should be? Is this a case of nature not nurture, or can good work habits be instilled at an early age to avoid all that nasty fussing over last-minute deadlines later?

This morning, Dash did his homework after breakfast, for his father (I was still in bed; Mabel slept well but I had insomnia), with little or no fuss. My new plan is two reminders an evening that homework exists, and one in the morning. If he sleeps late and doesn't have time for it, that will be his problem, not mine.

Will report back. In the meantime, I'd really like to know your opinions. Are you an in-good-time-er or a last-minute-er? Do you think you could be the other if you tried hard enough, or is it hard-wired?

Basters and boobies

I just wrote a big rant about homework and intransigent six-year-olds, but I think we'll leave that for another day. Maybe I just needed to write it.

*********

The morning before Thanksgiving, I found myself in the unhappy position of having to do the shopping with two children. It was my own fault, as on Monday when I should have done it I frittered away my time instead with more enjoyable pursuits; also, I hadn't yet planned enough to know what I needed.

But it wasn't so bad. They're at their best first thing in the morning, and we actually got out of the house by 9.30, which still counts as first thing in my book. They got a bagel each to keep them quiet, and things progressed without too many not-on-list items being added to the trolley.

As we processed down the rice-and-beans aisle (also peanut butters, honey, and juice boxes), Dash came running after me:

"Mummy, Mummy, look! Look! Can I get one of these? I've always wanted one of my very own to play with. Pleeeeease, Mummy?"

I looked to see what he was brandishing. It was a turkey baster.

On balance, I think I got away lightly with a pack of chocolate-milk straws and a bag of chips.

**********

It was colder this afternoon than it had been in the morning, and though I did get Mabel to wear her coat, she didn't have her gloves as we waited for Dash to get out of school. I was holding her (my side of the bargain that got her to put the coat on), and she was putting her hands inside my top to warm them up. Then her hands went a little further down ... down... I had to let out a shriek-laugh as I pushed her hand away.

 "I just wanted to find the..."

I stopped her before she could remember the word "nipple" - or anything like it - but I'm pretty sure the other mom I was chatting to knew exactly what had happened. It's possible that most of the school heard the squawk and knew she'd hit the spot. Letting your four-year-old get to second base with you in public is just never appropriate. (You probably knew that already.)

Duvet vous?

The baby has stolen my blanket.

By which I mean that the four-year-old has taken the supersoft espresso-brown blanket that lives at the foot of her parents' bed for the express purpose of keeping me, her longsuffering mother, warm at night - because I run about ten degrees colder than everyone else in this house, apparently - and is currently snuggling her tow-headed little self under it, fast asleep and away with the fairies to boot.

Not to mention the fact that she has a perfectly good duvet of her own, from Ikea, inside a very attractive duvet cover, also from Ikea, and additionally a big bright red fleece blanket purchased in Target not two months ago because she wouldn't wear her coat in Chicago. So she's sleeping on top of the red blanket, under the brown blanket, shunning the duvet, and sentencing me to another night of being just slightly not warm enough in bed. (This is the third night in a row.)

The things we put up with.

Meanwhile, in the parental bed - don't worry, I'm not going into any salacious details: this is about linens - the sheet war is being waged with all the silence and indignance two tired parents can muster over such things. See, there's a sheet under us, and a sheet over us, between us and the comforter. Raised as we were in a part of Europe that came late to duvets, but not as late as America, we're not entirely used to the top sheet - but I really like my down comforter, and I'm not going to wash it every week, so that's why the sheet is there. The sheet is turned down over the comforter when we sleep, but somehow - due no doubt to my inept bed-making skills - it doesn't want to stay there and tends to flip up over our faces. I can deal with this. I calmly flip it down again. But B gets all pissy with the sheet in his sleep and ends up with it mangled and twisted and generally not where it should be.

At some point in the night, inevitably, I come back to bed from my sojourn in Mabel's room, and, as I slip myself into the half-warm bed, I notice that the sheet on his side needs fixing. I pull it up and flip it neatly back where it should be. I suspect he thinks of me as the midnight sheet nazi. In turn, I grumpily wonder, every night, why he can do physics for the government but he can't work a simple bedsheet.

Luckily for all of us, there are more important things in life, and by morning we've forgotten it all again. This morning I dreamed that I tweeted to Mabel the fact that it was 5.15 when I left her bed, and then regretted it because it was bound to wake her up.

Happily, she didn't get my tweet because she stayed asleep for another hour, and all was right with the world.

A Half-Baked Auction

Bake sale! Buy baked goods for Christmas! Contribute to a good cause! Help victims of Hurricane Sandy!

Go to A Half-Baked Life today or tomorrow and bid on some delicious home-baked goodies to fill in that awkward gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to give to your loved ones, or to pass off as your own creations.

The white-chocolate-chip-cranberry cookies and the gingerbread muffins are my contributions, but I also highly recommend JeCaThRe's oatmeal cookies, and I bet everything else listed is just as good, if not better.

Sorry, no overseas shipping. If you're in Ireland, maybe we can do a deal over Christmas, though.

Many thanks to JHL for organizing this in aid of a great cause.

Feast report

Today we went to the zoo. Surprisingly, quite a lot of people seemed to think Black Friday would be a good zoo day, but the weather was perfect as it so rarely is for the zoo, and we did well. We saw a cheetah and the lions, some distant gorillas and a sad orang-utan (do they ever look otherwise), the reptiles and some indolent sea lions. The absolute highlight, however, was the naked mole rats.

Thanks to this book, which we have from the library, the children had heard of naked mole rats. But when I told Dash we could see them at the zoo, he reacted as if I'd just told him the unicorns would be coming up on the left.

"Ha ha."
"No, really. They're in the small mammal house."
"You're just being silly."
"I promise. They exist."
"Really?"
etc.

When we finally got to the small mammals we had to charge past all the (many and various) tamarins, pausing briefly at the two-toed sloth (who looked like nothing so much as a black labrador poking his nose out from under a comatose afghan hound), to get to the perspex tubes (to simulate tunnels) of naked mole rats. They weren't all that exciting in person, but the children were thrilled by their mere existence.

That's a lion in the distance. Left of the tree. See?

*******

But that's not why I'm here, and that's not why you're here either. You came for the food, didn't you? Well, the food is what you're getting. A report on yesterday, that is.

As we had no company for Thanksgiving, and we don't particularly like turkey, and we don't feel any weight of tradition on this culturally-not-ours day, I usually try to do something different. This year I saw a recipe for ribs, and the photo was so enticing that I decided to pull the slow-cooker out of the enforced retirement it's been in since its disastrous maiden voyage in 2004.

I'm here to tell you that it was a roaring success, and I might have to use the crockpot more often than once every eight years now that I've discovered this.

To accompany, we had baked potatoes and lemony green beans, and a nice shiraz which is probably the wrong thing to go with ribs, but we're not fussy.

Of course, I had to make a pie, even if I am anti-tradition. Apple, if you please. It was delish.

Pastry hearts. Because hearts symbolise Thanksgiving, right?

Then I was left with half an hour to spare and some extra pastry, so I took the half-can of pumpkin that was sitting in the fridge, looked up some recipes, and made mini pumpkin pies too. Mostly because Mabel had announced at her school feast on Tuesday that she loved pumpkin pie. She didn't like mine, of course.

Splats of pumpkin

The jury's still out on these, I admit.

The little things

My aim, as I sit here on Thanksgiving afternoon, is to get the children out of the house with their father so that I can read a book, or write something, or just veg out, under the guise of doing Very Important Cooking That Will Affect Their Dinner. Since it's 2.20pm and Dash is only now, finally getting dressed - at least, I think that's what he's doing upstairs, and the Superman and Spider-Man costumes he was sporting before don't count - it's taken a while to get to this point. But I'm still aiming for it, and at least B is outside supervising Mabel now, as she climbs trees barefoot in a tutu.

The tutu, if I may digress, has become ubiquitous lately. She has one that's almost legitimately skirt-like, and two that came from parties and are really just a lot of tulle on an elastic waistband. I don't really care so long as she has underpants on. She wears different tops and tights or leggings underneath every day, and she will countenance a dress in between times; but no trousers have been worn for months, and jeans are totally verboten.

Personally, I can't imagine life without my jeans. Pry them from my cold dead hands (legs) if you can, but until then I'll be happily denim-clad. Despite all my overthinking, and all the plans I may have for honing the perfect capsule wardrobe for our three weeks of festivities in Dublin, and whatever I end up buying - or planning to buy, or thinking maybe I can buy when we get there - I know that I'll end up packing a selection of jeans (bootleg, flare, skinny), a bunch of tops that all more or less go with the bottoms, a few cosy cardigans, and a dress or two just in case I get the opportunity to wear them. And then I'll end up in the same old jeans and the same comfy shoes 90% of the time anyway, and nobody will notice.

Speaking of which. I was inordinately pleased with myself the other day simply because I employed some shoe polish for its intended purpose and it did what it says on the tin. (Maybe I need to get out more.) But shoe polish is the sort of thing I tend to feel is only necessary for men of a certain age, or people who are a little too fussy. Tim Gunn, for instance, or my father, who has shined his shoes weekly - or perhaps morningly - for his entire life. At home we had a little basket containing polish (black and brown), brushes (one hard and one soft for each colour) and a cloth for final buffing. My dad showed me how to use them many moons ago, and every now and then I'd give my black-or-brown lace-up school shoes or mary-janes with brass buckles a bit of a swipe.

So last Spring I got a pair of blue mary-jane flats that were obscenely comfortable. As soon as sandal weather was over, in about October, I re-embraced them - but was sad to see that all the blue had been scuffed off the tips of the toes. They looked pretty shabby, and I feared that I'd have to abandon them. I wore them anyway, but felt less than - aha! - polished. What to do, I wondered. Was this the untimely end of obscene pedal comfort? And then inspiration struck - polish! I needed shoe polish!

A mere three weeks later, I finally remembered to look for navy shoe polish when we were somewhere that might sell it. And lo, I bought it and used it (because luckily my husband also owns some little shoe brushes and a rag for buffing), and my shoes are like new again. Hooray!

It really is the little things that can make you happy, if you'll let them. So today I'm thankful for shoe polish.

I'm also thankful for my beautiful crazy family, and all the luckiness I have in my life. And the Internet, which has made things much better in many ways than they would otherwise be.

And now Dash is dressed, Mabel is probably ready to come in again, and I have to legitimately busy myself with something to do with pie.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone, whether you celebrate it or not. Thanks for being here.

A qualified first

Mabel fell asleep last night without nursing.

I have to qualify that statement a whole lot, but it's still a first.

• She has fallen asleep at bedtime without nursing before, for her father a few times, and for the babysitter once - though not for a long time.
• She falls asleep without nursing in the car, in the stroller, and even in the middle of the night. It's just falling asleep at bedtime that's been the sticking point for, well, ever.
• She did nurse yesterday evening, but (because she'd had a nap) was then wide awake again (demanding waffle, water, music, etc) before finally falling asleep.

But last night, after wailing and crying and demanding and protesting that she couldn't, she finally lay down and let me start Cinderella, and in very little time, before Cinders had even got to the ball, I'd say, Mabel had yawned twice and her breathing was regular and I was pretty sure she was out. I got as far as losing the slipper before I stopped and gingerly sat up and crept away, but it was a done deal.

Given all those reservations, I'm sort of surprised by this - but all evening I have to admit that I had an odd sense of impending freedom.

Would you take fashion advice from this girl?

Nothing compares

It's been thirteen hours and seventeen days
Since they took the hour away from me
I go out every night from my bed to yours when you call me at 5am or before
And now you've messed up my Sinead O'Connor tribute poem too

Okay, fine, never mind. But my point is that it's been more than two weeks since the hour went back and Mabel still doesn't seem to have adjusted in the mornings. She broke a run of horrible nights last night by sleeping soundly from bedtime till morning, but morning came at the unreasonable hour of 4.50am, which is not what I would call morning. I nursed her for an hour and then I was drained dry and she was her father's problem and I got about an hour's sleep before I had to get up and find out what all the shouting was about.

*********

That moment when you've said "Fine, just get in the car naked then," and your four-year-old leaves the house resplendent in underpants and trailing a big red blanket, and you throw her clothes in the car for when you get there, and then the neighbour across the road comes out and sees you and laughs. And it's late November, of course. That moment. It's funny, but only because she's my second child.

*********

Mabel likes to put her feet in Dash's shoes and stomp around declaring, in a deep voice as if he's, you know, at least ten years older than her instead of two and a half, "I'm Dash." Then she says "I'm really strong," and "Daddy shouts at me," to add verisimilitude.

**********

Since the hour's been gone I can do whatever you want
I get up whenever you choose
I can never eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant
But nothing
I said nothing can take away these blues
`Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you

I don't think we're having a turkey on Thursday

I spend a few days thinking about jeans and shoes and suddenly it's Thanksgiving week and there's no food in the house.

Ah well. Food comes and goes, you know, but boots are good for at least two years, I'd say. I have a pair of boots upstairs that I bought in 1999, actually. I wore them at least once last year. (I'd wear them more often if I had any call for 2.5-inch heels on a regular basis. But somehow I never feel that first-grade pickup is the right time. Or daylight, for that matter.)

The reason I'm suddenly getting all twitchy about how untrendy I am is, of course, that we'll be going home to Dublin for three weeks at Christmas, and while not exactly the fashion capital of the western world, the stakes are a tiny bit higher than they are here. The season that's in it gives rise to opportunities to dress up, for one thing, and people there do tend to dress up a bit more. I just want to look like I'm not totally submersed by my soccermom lifestyle, that's all.

[And then I thought: submersed isn't a word, you idiot. It's submerged, or immersed. But I looked it up and it is a word and it means just what I meant it to, so that's nice.]

And when you only see people once a year, or there's the chance you'll be meeting up with people you haven't seen for ten years, or meeting people you've only interacted with on the Internet, not to mention the fact that the tiny statistical probability of bumping into an ex-boyfriend is raised by at least 75% if I'm walking down Grafton Street rather than to first-grade pickup, you want to look at least reasonably not awful.

[Yes, I know I just changed from second person to first and back again in the same paragraph-long sentence. I did it on purpose. So I did.]

Anyway. Back to food. It is slowly dawning on me - these things take time to percolate through, as my friend Thrift Store Mama was just talking about today - that my fruit and vegetable intake is not really up to recommended standards. I always thought, if I thought anything about it, that I wasn't great on fruits but my vegetables made up for it. It's true that I do like vegetables, but it's also true that breakfast and lunch are often quite vegetable-free meals for me. Breakfast is basically a free pass: I see it as an opportunity for guilt-free carbing. Lunch would have a vegetable if a vegetable happened along, but all too often it's some riff on a ham and cheese sandwich, with maybe a crescent or two of apple that Mabel didn't eat. So that leaves dinner, when I probably get in two servings of vegetables easily enough, but that's still three away from even the most basic daily requirement.

This train of thought began when I read Jamie at Light and Momentary mention that she was aiming for nine servings of fruit and vegetables every day. Nine? How could anyone eat that much food, I wondered. Well, hey, apparently that's my recommended daily intake. And here I was thinking I was failing at just five, when in fact I'm failing miserably at nine instead.

Oh well, I thought, I'll just eat nine servings a day and I'll be slender and full of energy in no time. And yet, thinking did not make it so. I think I had one and a half extra servings yesterday, and one today, and they all involved baby carrots and hummus, which are quite nice but not nine servings nice. (Also, I don't think I'm meant to eat eight servings of carrots every day. I'd turn orange.)

The difficulty is that vegetables, and fruit for that matter, just don't have that fluffy or crunchy or dough-like baked consistency that goes as well with a nice cup of tea as, say, muffins do. Or cookies. Or a piece of cake or a scone or a brownie. Nobody sits down for a cuppa and some broccoli florets. Or coffee and a carrot. (Stick of celery? Brr.) Even a quarter cup of raisins just don't cut it with a hot beverage, unless they're liberally surrounded by oatmeal and sugar and baked into some sort of, let's say, cookie-type vehicle.

So far I'm batting about 50/50 on whether I think "Now I'll have a cup of tea and something chocolate" or "Now I'll eat a healthy snack," but even if I add one serving a day for this week, it's a start.

I think this is one for the "Best intentions" tag, don't you? I probably need to start a "Went awry" tag too.

Sartorial

I am a child of the 80s, no doubt about it. I was 12 in 1985, so my most impressionable, most peer-influenced, most painfully needing-to-conform years were right then.

It took me a long time to recover. I was still wearing tapered-leg jeans in the early 90s, when all my friends were moving towards the straight leg. (I remember - here's a thing to amaze my children with - the first time I saw a fleece jacket. It was strangely bobbly and brightly coloured and I wasn't sure it was nice. Little did I knew what a ubiquitous piece of wardrobe it was poised to become. But I digress.)

Anyway, time passed and I embraced the boot-leg with all the passion of one whose thighs are not more slender - or even as slender - as her calves. Even though Ireland, with its persistent rain and perma-puddles is the worst place to have yards of denim flapping round the soles of your shoes, I left my jeans legs outside my boots, soaking up the moisture and passing it, by osmosis, halfway up to my knees every time I left the house. This is how we must suffer for our art, we fashionistas. With wet socks as soon as you take off your shoes.

Now I think of it, I also remember clearly that moment when taper moved to boot-cut. It was 1988 and we had a Spanish exchange student in the class. She wore her jeans outside her boots. We were flabbergasted by her audacity and certain that she was wrong, but in hindsight, the Spanish are always more to the forefront of the cutting fashion edge than those of us on the waterlogged fringes of the continent.

It also takes longer for global trends to get to the US. I think they start in Japan, actually, because in Sydney in 2007 I was already seeing flat slouchy pixie boots with skinny legs, and thinking they looked horrible. Now, a mere five years later, the look has reached the shores of America. (Okay, maybe it got here sooner. But it's only now that I'm getting inured to it.)

Which is really my point: what a long time it takes to come around to the idea of wearing something again. I know the shillouette this time is subtly different from that of the 80s: skinnies are not the same as tapered legs, and shoulder pads are not yet mandatory - but when the legs inside the jeans are more tapered than drainpipe-shaped, it sort of ends up looking the same. After so long liking the idea that my legs looked the same width at the bottom as at the top, it's hard to see myself getting narrower all the way to the floor and not zone in on my hips as an overly-wide widest point.

Last winter I bought a pair of not-too-skinny skinny jeans, and wore them a few times, with boots. Last week, I apparently lost the run of myself entirely and bought a pair of red quite-skinny skinny jeans. Now I'm obsessively trying to figure out what shoes to wear with them, because I'm not convinced the boots are the best thing after all. And what tops, and what coats, and generally everything. It has occasioned a lot of Google image searches and Pinterest wanderings and Zappos trawling and I may not find the perfect accompaniments until next year.

But that's fine, because then when I put on last-year's jeans, by comparison they looked much more like something I could cope with, being just a teensy bit wider and also dark denim instead of tomato red. My eye is adjusting to the new shape, slowly and reluctantly.

It's a fine line, trying not to look as if you spent the last ten years under a rock but also acknowledging that you're no longer 25 and even when you were 25 you didn't have legs that were four feet long and shaped like drinking straws. I just need the perfect pair of shoes to convey all that.

Good deeds and pumpkin bread

Remember Hurricane Sandy? Way back when? Oh so long ago, before Halloween and Mabel's birthday and November started and all that stuff. We bunked in the basement and the wind blew and things got wet. Ancient history, right?

But not so much for people in New Jersey and New York who are still deep, deep in the throes of cleaning up, recalibrating their lives, starting over, and somehow at the same time getting through the day-to-day requirements of staying warm and fed and dry. Not to mention the fact that nature threw a snowstorm at them a week ago.

Justine lives in New Jersey, and she's going to use her lovely blog for even more good than usual - as if thoughtful posts, delicious food, and lovely pictures weren't enough - by hosting an online auction for bloggers' baked goods on November 26th. As I both blog and bake, I offered to take part. You can read more about it here, and I'll link again when it's happening. I predict there will be delicious things available for a really good cause, so you might want to bear it in mind.

I won't be making pumpkin bread for it, as a loaf would be pretty heavy to ship, but apparently there's a great outcry for this, perhaps by now my signature recipe. It's certainly one thing I bake that both children will eagerly eat.

I found it on the internet somewhere but I'm afraid I've no idea where at this point, and the addition of chocolate chips is my own, so it's almost original. Or else so ubiquitous that it can't belong to anyone.

Pumpkin Bread
(chocolate chips optional but recommended)

1.5 cups (200g) all-purpose flour (or you could probably use half white, half wholewheat)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 cup (200g) white (granulated) sugar
1 cup (200g) pumpkin puree (half a 14oz tin)
1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/4 cup (60ml) water

1/2 cup (85g) chocolate chips (I like semi-sweet)

Mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and spices together in a large bowl.
Mix the rest of the ingredients except the chocolate chips in a medium bowl.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until just combined.
Mix in the chocolate chips.
Pour into a prepared loaf tin and bake at 350 F (180 C) for one hour or until a skewer comes out clean (without hitting a chocolate chip).


P.S. What do you think of the new banner? Seasonal, yes, but does it make the title hard to read or not? Feedback welcome.

Fortunately/unfortunately

(Format shamelessly stolen from the children's book of the same name.)

Unfortunately, Mabel decided she didn't want to go to school today.

Fortunately, my husband's job is delightfully flexible, so he was able to stay with her while I set out for the run I had planned for after I dropped her off.

Unfortunately, I only got as far as the end of the road before I ran out of steam, decided fighting with Mabel had sapped the energy from my very bones, and went home again. (There probably wasn't much energy there to begin with.)

Fortunately, this gave me plenty of time for a nice long shower with the new shower gel and to shave my legs for the first time in about a month.

Unfortunately (for Mabel), you don't get to watch TV if you stay home for no good reason.

Fortunately, she just got a belated birthday present of some new Lego, so she was able to entertain herself pretty well all morning.

Unfortunately, I still didn't feel like carting her to the supermarket, so I didn't do the shopping.

Fortunately, I can probably cobble something together for dinner from what we already have, even if it's just (not from a box) mac 'n cheese and roasted broccoli.

Unfortunately, our babysitter can't come this weekend so we're not going to get to see the new Bond film as I was hoping.

Fortunately, her mom sent me the number of a friend who has three daughters who would love to babysit.

Unfortunately, Mabel won't countenance the idea of any other babysitter.

[...Maud bursts into tears at the idea of Daniel Craig carrying on without her...]

Unfortunately, I can't find a picture I wish to endorse here, because his magnetism does not work for me in stills. When I first saw him (in Munich, with bad hair) I couldn't figure out why I found him so attractive, but every time he was on screen my eyes just wouldn't look anywhere else.

If the picture's not working, you can go here and feast your eyes on whichever one you like best.

Fortunately (for you), I got over it and found this one anyway. You're welcome.

Placemats

This morning I went into Dash's first-grade classroom to help them weave placemats.

I wasn't really sure what weaving placemats was going to entail, but the teacher had asked and I had agreed; and when I got there, I was already mentioned in their morning message: the whiteboard said "Dash's mom is going to help us." Immortalized in dry-erase marker.

The first-graders are just as sweet as the kindergarteners were last year, and almost equally bad at following direction and good at asking repeatedly for help. The girls still open procedings by telling me they like my hair, which I think is something we could all learn from.

The placemats were made from strips of coloured paper woven through the "bars" of another piece of paper. (I found an instruction here which shows more or less exactly what we did, if you're interested.) Some of the kids got the idea straight away, while others struggled with the notion that if you go over and then under with the first strip, you go under and then over with the next, or with the physical execution of same.

Some of them had done it before so they had a better idea of what was going on, and Dash had learned to "weave" with yarn on cardboard at a craft thing, so I was gratified that his went along pretty well. The teacher pointed out (to me, not to the whole class or anything) that a lot of the boys did very well at it, because it's a mechanical, spacial-relation-y thing. It's nice to see that boys are better at some things, since they're often still lagging behind developmentally when it comes to fine-motor skills and communication.

(Then again, do boys ever catch up with communication? Oops, sorry. My fingers slipped and fell on the snark key for a minute there.)

It was also nice just to get a feel for the class and meet a few more of them. There are four first-grade classes at his school and the kids were randomly reassigned after kindergarten, so I only knew a few of them from last year. Dash hasn't really bonded with anyone in this class yet and still meets up with his friends from last year at recess; but he's a pretty cheerful kid who's happy to try to be friends with everyone, so I'm not worried. You don't find a bestie in every class.

*********

Meanwhile, Mabel and a marauding horde of four-year-olds (and some adults, I'm sure) were ransacking the neighbourhood supermarket for Thanksgiving feast ingredients. I sort of wish I'd seen it, but I'm mostly glad I wasn't helping at nursery school today. Her friends never say they like my hair.

Wishful thinking

In an ideal world, one could take a photo of whatever one's child accomplished today and tweet it to the teacher, or post it on Facebook and tag her, and that would be homework done. Dash will voluntarily write a thank-you card to his sister for a picture she drew of them together, but he won't damn well sit down and do his assigned homework until all else has failed and all bargains have been deployed and everything is an hour behind schedule.

That's a love heart up above them. And so is that one in between them. It's a practice one.

 

 

 

 

 

In an ideal world, I wouldn't have this headache that's been loitering around my right eye socket all day and is now doing handstands on the bridge of my nose.

It would also be nice if the front door would unlock itself when I point the car keys at it and press the blue button. I don't know why it hasn't got the message yet, since I do it at least once a week.

Points

In no particular order, to get us past this long weekend and on to the next thing:

I made chana masala and dal again last night for dinner. Delicous, economical, and much less swimming in oil than the takeaway version would be: what's not to love? I'm almost glad our local Indian closed down, if it makes me do this sort of thing. Part of the disappointment of takeout meals, to me, is that they're there and then they're gone. If you make it yourself, the coming-together time, the measuring a spoonful of red powder and a half-spoonful of yellow powder and a tincture of orange this and a grating of yellow that, and frying an onion almost to charring point, makes the whole thing so much more satisfying.

It was 72 degrees today and Mabel was barefoot outside again. She'd just got used to wearing tights and we've probably set ourselves back two weeks now. Tomorrow it will be raining with a predicted high of 55. I think we've seen the last of summer. I've said that before, but I think this is really it.

Dash keeps saying "... and so on, and so on, and so forth." Maybe I can make him say "and forsooth." (He just asked me if there's something called "so-a-hundreth".) I met with his teacher today, who said he's got a great vocabulary, he asks a lot of questions ("Oh, you've noticed that?" I said), and he never lets her get away with anything. That sounds about right, for Mr Heightened Sense of Injustice.

I finally have a lull. It seems like it's been the next thing and the next thing and forsooth (as they don't say), for months now, from starting school to October's trip to Chicago to Halloween to Mabel's birthday to our visitor last week. We don't do anything for Thanksgiving, so beyond roasting a chicken or something that's not really a blip in my planning. I think I might be at the point where I start the Christmas shopping now.

Which really means I'm looking for a new pair of boots and I need to get a haircut. Because until I've sorted myself out I can't begin to shop for other people.

Lofty aspirations

I registered for BlogHer. See, I have a logo and everything. (Look right. Down a bit.)

I have no idea how that will go, but what the heck. There was an early-bird deal, so the actual conference ticket was as inexpensive as it could possibly be (unless I had sponsorship or something, I suppose). If I can't go, or chicken out, I can transfer the ticket to someone else any time before the end of June, and I'm sure it would be pretty easy to find someone to take it.

It's in Chicago, which is not exactly down the road, but a flight for one isn't going to break the bank. I suppose now it'll be in DC again in 2014, but if I'd waited it wouldn't ever be. I'll have to find someone to share a room with; I think there are forums to link up with people. If you're reading and you're going and you need a roomie, hi! Consider me! I'm quite tidy and I don't think I snore.

I don't know what I expect to get out of BlogHer. I know it's a huge conference. I know there'll be bloggers there I read but am too shy to talk to. I know there'll be bloggers there I'll start reading afterwards. I hope I'll meet some people who might start reading my blog. I hope I can manage not to die obsessing about what I'm wearing and how my hair looks the whole time. (Honestly, my hair usually looks good if I make any sort of effort. I'll be obsessing about how thin I am or am not.) I hope it will not be anything like high school.

Mostly, though, I want to go because more and more I'm identifying as a blogger. It's what I am, while I'm a mom and an editor (on hiatus) and an ex-pat and a wife. I don't want to put ads here at this point, and I'm pretty sure I don't have nearly enough traffic to bother, but I would love it a lot if some day this could become part of, or lead to, something that brought in a portion of income.

So I'm going to go to a conference, because blogging is my self-appointed, not-for-profit job.

All the rage, no hormones yet

Whenever Mabel is talking to her dolls, she admonishes them with Sweetie. Thus: "Sweetie, how many times do I have to tell you? No more snacks. Eat your dinner."
I'm sure I don't use "Sweetie" like that. I'm sure she did that all on her own.

You know I like to pseudo-psychoanalyse my children to find out why they're doing what theyr'e doing and thus exonerate myself from blame in the bad-parenting deparment, right? So that's what I'm doing at the moment with Dash's intermittent bouts of rage, which seem today to be directed solely at me. (Of course, I was the only authority figure around at the time. But I still think he's taking things out on me that he wouldn't on other people.)

We went to a playground after school, and Dash bumped his head. He briefly allowed me to hug him, agreed we should go home, and then ran off for one more go on the monkey bars. Then he had a shitfit all the way home because I wouldn't give him a piggyback. Excuse me, but I'm trying to push your sister on her bike because there's a very infinitessimal uphill gradient in this direction and she's wailing because she's thirsty and I didn't bring a drink for her and you will have a canary if I let her drink yours and we have bags and you're SIX AND A HALF AND I'M NOT GIVING YOU A DAMN PIGGYBACK.

So he dragged my scarf all the way home trying to lasso branches with it instead. When we got back he said his head still hurt. Which might have been why he was so pissy but I didn't know that seeing as how he had run off to do the monkey bars two minutes after the bump. Gah.

An hour later it was dinnertime. He told me he still had some sandwich left from lunch in his backpack and he wanted to finish that first. I said Fine. He said "So go and get it." I said, "You get it." It was on the other side of the room and I was pretty sure I didn't need to be ordered around in such a manner when I was making his dinner (another sandwich, of course). He screamed at me for the next half hour, and the stalemate was only resolved when his father came home and got the lunchbox for us.

I mean, I wasn't being petty. I just felt he could get it himself, and once he started screaming at me and ordering me to get it, then the moment had passed and I couldn't even think of giving in to such demands. I don't know how single parents manage when they come to an impasse like that without a third party to intervene.

So maybe this is directed at me. It's a new feeling, because before, I was the favoured one. I'm not saying he was all Yes'M, No'M to me, but in general I was the one who would swoop in longsufferingly and present a few words of reason when he was at loggerheads with his father (say) and come to some sort of agreement. The tables have turned. I am inestimably grateful to his father for providing levity with the children when I'm wrung out, and good-natured races to get them where they should be when I'm run down, and wine in my glass when I'm at my wits' end. He saves my sanity daily.

Perhaps Dash is entering a new period of separating from family - maybe he's getting more involved with school and friends and his life outside the home, and as the main symbol of his life inside the home, I'm the one he manifests the push-me pull-you effects with most strongly. Maybe he's yearning for boundaries and hard-and-fast rules and he needs to test his limits with me, Keeper of the Rules (hah) most of all. Maybe he's just in one of those turd-phases. All I know is he's picking fights with me like a boyfriend who wants to break up but doesn't have the nerve to do it.

I'm not going to break up with him. So he's just going to have to deal. I hope there's enough wine in the world while I wait.

Past lives

What I really want to do is retire to bed with my laptop and blog my little fingers out. But that'll have to wait until I've finished all this homework-enforcing (not happening), dinner-producing (only grudgingly; didn't I feed you two just last week?), bed-putting-to (on my own; husband has watertight excuse of PTA meeting), and nose-wiping (constant, unending, soul destroying) that I have to do for HOURS and HOURS until that glorious moment will finally come.

However, since making the grown-ups' dinner just involves shovelling some of yesterday's lasagne onto a plate and thence into the microwave, and I've given up on the homework for the moment and they're watching their beloved TV programme, I'm just going to start this right now in the brief, blessed peace. Standing up here at the kitchen counter is not quite the same as cosily in my bed, but it'll have to do. It's closer for nose-wiping purposes anyway.

Kate Takes 5 of the Lovely Irish Bloggers (not their official name) started (started? perpetuated?) a meme this morning, asking what we did before we were "just a mum". (Just.)

I did a few things. I did a lot of things. I became an excellent waitress when I was 16. And again every year until I was 21. I tended bar in North Beach in San Francisco for a summer. I had regulars who came in just to chat to me on Monday evenings when business was slow. I dated a German who was five years older than me and had a car so he could show me the sights. I camped in Yosemite with my best friend and hiked down from Half-Dome and was beware of bears and ate pizza beside a family of raccoons.

I spent a year in Spain, studying. I mean, "studying". I can order two beers in six languages.

I got a job in a software company in Dublin during the boom times, despite knowing very little about computers. I didn't need to; I was an editor. These days software companies have mostly let go of the editing function, but back in the late nineties the software company people were happy to employ a whole department of us to give comma-placement workshops to the technical writers and spend our staff meetings discussing the proper use of the en-dash. Happy, happy times. I had finally found My People.

It was an Irish company, but head office was based in California. I got sent to Redwood City for a month to do, um, something; I forget what. I had a rental car, an apartment, and a company credit card. The following year I was sent to Phoenix, Arizona for a month to train someone. Or something; I forget what. I had a rental car, an apartment, a credit card, and I got to see the Grand Canyon.

This shiny photo of a photo is of me taking a very small hike in Sedona, Arizona. It was pretty nice. Also, I had good hair.

Right now I'm locked in my own bedroom while my overexcited, overtired, anarchic children are whispering on the other side about screwdrivers and sticky tape. I have threatened the light sabers and the halloween candy and none of it has borne fruit and I don't know how to do bedtime on my own tonight. My hair is greying and in need of a cut.

I thought I was tired when I swept the restauraunt floors at 2am and was back there opening up at 8 the next morning. I thought I could be diplomatic, and firm yet empathetic, when dealing with a managee who started crying in a meeting. I knew I could be organized and systematic when booking a department of engineers travel for a conference in Vegas. I felt I could be convincing and persuasive when arguing my point to a room of non-editors.

I didn't know I was still in training. This one is the hardest job yet.

Ballot

Dash is off school tomorrow because of the election, so if I'm going to say anything I suppose I'd better say it now.

I happened to be in California when the Bush v Gore election took place in 2000. I barely knew who was who at that point, but I was told that everyone in the office was Democrat except for one lone Republican. That was the year the count was drawn out over days and nobody knew for sure who had won for quite a while. And still, I didn't know enough to care one way or the other. I thought Gore looked a bit slimy, with his aquiline nose and his supercilious stare.

The next time there was an election, I was living in Texas and already blogging. I was disappointed but not terribly surprised when Bush won again.

By the election after that I was definitely more invested in the country, and more opinionated about who I thought should win, but also somewhat distracted by the fact that I had just, earlier that hour, given birth. That was a good day all round.

The next time there's an election, if I'm still in this country, I'll probably be allowed to vote in it. I am at the point where I would like to do that. I'd really like to be able to do that tomorrow, even if adding my voice to the clamour of voices in an already blue state wouldn't make any appreciable difference. I'd love to add my voice to those voting yes to Question 6 on the Maryland ballot - to allow same-sex marriage - and I could even have an opinion on questions 5 and 7 as well. (I suppose there might be other questions too, numbered 1 through 4, perhaps, that I haven't heard anything about, but if I was voting I think I'd probably make an effort to discover something about them.)

Mostly when it comes to politics I'm (as a friend said about themselves) an amoeba, but my sixth-grade teacher drummed into us the importance of voting, so I always do, even if I only know enough to know who I don't want. The Irish system of proportional representation is only slightly less complicated (but much fairer) than the US electoral colleges, but over there, so long as I gave the bad guys the last number on my ballot, I felt I'd done my duty.

So that's all I have to say about that. Please go out and vote for the good guys tomorrow, if you can.

Fork 'andles*

I have decided that all birthdays of my older child are like my birthdays before I was 25, while all the birthdays of my younger child are like mine after I turned 28. (I was ambivalent about 26 and 27, apparently.) I mean, with the first child you're always looking ahead, excited for the next thing; but for the last it's more backward looking, with nostalgia, not quite sure you want to be here just yet.

So Mabel's four now, and I don't have a three-year-old any more.

Four started out to be all I'd hoped for and more (once you get past the early waking which, astoundingly, did not change this morning despite the fact that we were all supposed to "fall back") - she wiped her own bottom, she put on her own clothes, she even walked quite a few tens of yards before remembering that she often demands to be carried. We were full of the joys of things four-year-olds can do, and it was lovely.

Happy morning birthday girl

Sadly, it seems that four-year-olds can't nap, so things went downhill in the afternoon, when it turned out that four-year-olds are often just as demanding of having their noses wiped and equally prone to screeching fits of disapproval as their previous-day's selves. Ah well.

Last candle

Apparently she didn't get enough presents, and I made the wrong sort of chocolate cake, and she wanted lemon scones instead of strawberry ones. But she did say thank-you to me very nicely, and unprompted, on digging into her slice of deep, dark, chocolate deliciousness, and I think that's a good start for four.

* Just watch this.

Squishy

She sits up in bed at some ungodly hour and musters all her self-control to stop crying.

"Mummy," she hiccups, "let me explain why I have to have booboo to get back to sleep."

"Okay." I'm a bit delirious with tiredness because my body is no longer inured to waking every two hours. I know I should stick to my guns and refuse to nurse her, but I also know that I owe her at least a listen to her point of view, and that I'll probably give in.

"Because..." she casts about a bit for something that will convince me of the strength of her feelings; "...because it's milky and ... squishy... and I neeeeed it."

Really, how could I refuse such an eloquent plea? Also, see above, re tired.

Night-weaning is a long process, it seems. We go back and forth. Blanket rules just don't work here. I can make an edict, but for the sake of all our sanity, sometimes I give in. Mostly, I get into bed with her when she wakes, and she asks for booboo, and I say "First, I'm going to tell you Cinderella," and she's asleep before I've got to Act II (The Prince Decides to Throw a Ball).

But sometimes she's wide awake, open-eyed and waiting for me to hurry up and get to the end so she can have what she's patiently waiting for. Meanwhile I'm wandering off at every sentence and trying not to just fall asleep mid-word. She'll say "Mummy, have you finished yet?" and I'll say "All right, here, then; just go to sleep," and hike up my pyjama top.

We've said - I've said, and she has sort of acquiesced, so far - that once she's four there'll be no more booboo at bedtime, only first thing in the morning. I don't know how that's going to go on Sunday. There might be more back-and-forthing, it might not be as clear-cut as that. But we'll start trying, and eventually, we will see progress.

Jack o'

And the fun just keeps on coming, until today, when it stopped and left us with nothing but a pile of contentious candy to give Mabel something to constantly bug me about.

By which I mean that no sooner was Sandy over than Halloween was upon us. In fact, Halloween started before Sandy arrived, because our neighborhood costume parade was last Friday. I'd found suitable underpinnings for Luke Skywalker at the eleventh hour in the thrift store, we'd been lent a Jedi cloak, and Mabel had her dress all ready and waiting.

Here they are, posing for all they're worth. Note the Skywalker furrowed brow and the Princess one-foot balance.

We walked around all the stores, collected candy, posed briefly for the judges, who were not much impressed by such lack of originality, and watched the magic show afterwards. A good time.

On Sunday we bought a family of baby pumpkins at the farmer's market for Mabel, and one large one for Dash to carve. Mabel already had one from her pumpkin patch field trip earlier in the week. As soon as we got home, before we could even make lunch, the pumpkins had to be carved. I did the dirty work (the gouging) and let Daddy do the artistic bit.

On Wednesday morning, after two days sequestered in the house due to weather events, everyone was happily (on my part anyway) dispatched to school. Mabel's school doesn't do costumes on Halloween, which may be a little disappointing for some, but I think is a great decision on the whole, given the proclivities of preschoolers to sometimes lose their tiny minds when "fun" is thrust upon them.

Dash's school does a "book parade" wherein you are required (advised? requested?) to dress as your favourite book character and bring the book to prove it. Without much forethought he was happy to do the same as last year - Peter Parker. He wore his Spider-Man costume under his regular clothes and carried a camera. It may have been a little subtle - I'm not sure many people realised he was dressed up at all. The red mask was peeking out of his jeans pocket, but even that might not have given the game away to any but the most tuned-in of observers.

The final nail in the coffin of Halloween was, of course, last night's trick-or-treating. Coming off two days of napping (and associated late bedtimes, because for every hour-long nap, she goes to bed two and a half hours late) Mabel did not, on no account, get a nap yesterday. So by 5:30, when the time came to suit up, she was a little fragile. First there was a breakdown over the fact that I was trying to get her to wear a thin fleece sweater under the princess dress, and then a total loss of sanity over the fact that Mummy wanted to stay at home with her glass of wine to hand out candy while Daddy took the kids around the houses. We compromised with a thinner long-sleeved top and a bowl of candy left on the front step beside our flickering jack o' lanterns.

One jaunt up and down the street, a lot of candy in two bags, not too much sampled as soon as they got home, and eventually, not so late as it might have been, the whole spectacle was over for one more year.

Apart from the candy, which will drag on and on and on, well into the Christmas season, one dessert at a time. This morning Mabel asked for breakfast dessert. I suspect the disappointment will be just as piquant tomorrow morning.