Buon Apetito!

I found a recipe book I’d forgotten I had. Super Hubs’ grandmother had written a cookbook for her adult children of their favorite family recipes, and I received a copy, shortly after we’d married. It is simple in its form; handwritten on plain white paper, in the beautiful loopy cursive that girls born in the beginning of the 20th century were taught.

Admittedly, I’ve tried very few of the recipes in the 22 years we’ve been married. Grandma was a 1st generation Italian, and I would be reluctant to put some of the dishes in front of my picky children. Like Squash & Eggs. Or Squid in Tomato Sauce. And some of the ingredients I am not quite clear on. Like Ceci. (Chickpeas?) Or 1/2 lb. Perciatelli in 11/2 lengths. (Do I bring a ruler to the grocery store?) Cicoria. (Dandelions. Do I pluck them from a field?)

But I absolutely love the historical significance of this cookbook! Grandma wrote an interesting little blurb underneath many of the recipes. “...I must remind you that it is a tradition (underlined once) to eat lasagna on Easter (underlined thrice). The variety of meat in the sauce is always served as a second course.”

Grandma was an amazing cook, filling the stomachs of her six children several times a day. My mother-in-law cooks very similarly, and I’ve been the blessed beneficiary of many of her meals over the years. I’ve made several of Grandma’s dishes, such as her Cauliflower & Macaroni, and Chicken Cacciatore. Surprisingly, they were fairly simple, using a simple base of tomato paste and browned garlic.

I recently acquired a new (old) recipe of Grandma’s, not present in her cookbook, sent to me by Super Hub’s cousin. Steak Pizzaiola. I followed the recipe exactly, and it was to die for.

Thanks, Grandma! Buon Apetito to us!

Date With The Dean

After a week of nursing my back, nursing my sick Little Squirt, and nursing a kitty with conjunctivitis, I was treated to an evening out on Thursday, by the former Dean of the college where Super Hubs works.

It wouldn’t be a January evening in Chicago without record cold temps. It was -8*, the coldest night of the year so far. I would venture to guess that next December 31st we will still be referring to that evening as the year’s coldest. Even for Chicago, it was phenomenally, ridiculously frigid. I layered clothing upon clothing, and packed the backseat of our car with blankets, preparing for the worst. (I feared an Epic Car Fail on the freeway, with AAA ignoring our calls. Super Hubs and I would be stranded and shivering all night, our frozen bodies not discovered until the morning. It was not a way I intended to spend our Date Night.)

But we arrived in the city without incident, other than when all the traffic on the Kennedy came to a complete halt. Apparently the President of China had just arrived, and we all needed to sit in our cars for 15 minutes without moving while his motorcade drove through.

We met a few of Super Hub’s co-workers at Tavern at the Park for drinks, first. It’s always interesting for me when I am around the co-workers. They are brilliant academics with all sorts of degrees and opinions and interesting travel experiences. I find them fascinating and intense, and occasionally intimidating, as they discuss something like their experiences of teaching a class in Uganda, and I’m all, “Well, that sounds like fun! I’ve been busy taking my cat to the vet.” I spent a big part of the hour enjoying my appetizer. (Flatbread with prosciutto, figs and gorgonzola, sprinkled with truffle oil. Oh. My. Gosh.)

Our little party than headed to the Harris Theater to join the rest of the party for a jazz concert. If jazz was a food, it’d be melted butter. Mmmm...so yummy, smooth, comforting! I am completely enamored with jazz, and thoroughly enjoyed the concert, after I silenced my phone alarm. It goes off every 12 hours at 8 and 8 without fail to remind me to take my asthma med. It’s a responsible little thing, even ringing persistently if my phone is off. So, because I have no idea how turn the alarm function off my phone, I sat through the first half hour of the concert anxiously awaiting for the sound of my alarm so I could rapidly silence it. My quick-fire finger managed to quiet the alarm as soon as it rang. No one was the wiser, except for Super Hubs, who glared at me.

For the final fun of the evening, we made our way over to the former Dean’s beautiful home. It was breathtakingly cold as we parked on a side street and walked the block to the condo. The doorman directed us up the elevator, and we entered the unit to an intimate party. We were here specifically to help entertain the Hong Kong program people. We spent a month in Hong Kong with the kids back in ‘01, and I can talk Hong Kong with the best of them. We shared delicious stew, corn bread and salad overlooking the sparkling winter sky through the bay window. It was magical.

Splat!

My back went out on Thursday night, which wasn’t a huge surprise. I had the typical warning signs: Odd, random muscle pains shooting up my back and down my leg, and an inability to put on my boots. Seriously, I realize that I am slowly getting up there in years, but I workout and do yoga and should be able to bend over and put my shoes on my own middle-aged self. So, when my muscles are too tight to allow me to do something less successfully than the average 2yo, I might as well see a billboard flashing: “Warning! I Can See Your Future And It Looks Sedentary. Prepare To Infirm.”

My back issues usually arise after I have been A) Lifting something Wonder Woman would have been better equipped to carry or B) Not processing stress in a healthy way. I’ve had all sorts of advice regarding chiropractors, exercises, ice vs. heat and yada yada yada. But I know myself well. I’ve had issues with my back since I was 16, and it just takes two days of rest with drugs and a heating pad and I’m good as new.

Being the high-energy sort, it just kills me to lie on the couch for two days straight. But I try to receive it as a gentle time-out from God, putting a little pause on the pace of my life. I attempt to stay peaceful, respect my limitations, and let the unimportant things go. If I need to disappoint someone, life will still go on.

In the midst of my endeavors to be all Zen-like and gentle with myself, my Type A self still managed to accomplish a few things. I......
....finished this month’s Book Club read.
....finished this week’s People magazine.
....nagged and threatened the boys into writing their Christmas thank you notes.
....skyped with my college daughter.
....updated my address file.
....set the dvr to record some movies for my youngest.
....fretted about several incomplete projects, and came to no worthwhile conclusions.

But tonight I am done with the infirming. I will drag my gimpy self off of the couch and into a lovely restaurant to have dinner with friends, hobbling all the way. But it will be worth it. I need my people back.

Creating New Space

Without spending gobs of money, I’ve made a few decorating adjustments here and there to the room formerly know as The Library. It’s currently being called Mom’s Prayer Room, or Dad’s Office When Mom Lets Him In. I’m attempting to make it more homey and zen-like. But giving me the go-ahead to decorate is like giving the Mouse the Cookie. One purchase snowballs into another purchase and a bunch of ideas, and I’m never done.

My quest to decorate this room began when a friend, who was moving out of state, gave me one of her beautiful pictures to hang on my wall. With the pretty new art work in place, I began to loathe the sofa. Its throw pillows irritated me because their color was now all wrong. So I bought some new throw pillows whose style made me feel peaceful. So then the sofa looked good, but that made me hate the chair. We can’t buy a new one right now, so I found a cozy white throw to hang over it. That made the chair more tolerable to me. So then the sofa and the chair looked good, but I began to abhor the lamp. I’ve lived with the lamp in this room for the past four years, but suddenly it revolted me to an insane level. It became an eyesore, completely draining my energy every time I entered the room or even thought about it.

Yesterday I headed out to Home Goods, an establishment that is an enemy to our retirement plans. (Whenever I enter that store, I find at least thirty-two items I absolutely have to have that I never knew I needed until that moment. It has all kinds of adorable home accessories in all kinds of colors, and I could stroll around there for hours just looking.) I found a lamp that was perfectly my French Country/Eclectic taste, and I brought it home. It makes my room look so much better. I love it! But now I’m bothered by the side table.....

Spiritual Formation is similar to Interior Design, I’m learning. A sinful pattern I’ve lived with for years suddenly begins to repulse me. It doesn’t feel comfortable anymore with the Me that I want to be. I see it glaring and want it rooted out and replaced with something lovely. So God and I work on that. And then something else begins to nag at me; I recognize that a certain relationship is not a positive influence on me. Or I could make better use of a particular block of time. Or........the list goes on.

The spiritual practices of Silence, Solitude and Prayer, specifically, breathe new life into my soul. God is doing a little interior designing in me, and He has an unlimited budget. I am all for that!

A Lizard Tale

A crisis of magnificent proportions was averted last night. Whew! I barely survived the stress!

Little Squirt had had a friend over to play in the afternoon, and was quite zealous in showing him his bedroom and Beardie. Later, after dinner, when I went up to the bedroom to feed Rex, I noticed a weird odor. It turned out that Little Squirt had left a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur under the hot bulb on Rex’s terrarium, and the rubber dinosaur was melting. Rex was curled up in the corner of his tank, not looking good at all. Oh no, was he dead?! My heart dropped.

I called Super Hubs to come quickly and help me assess the Beardie. He poked at him gently. Rex opened one eye but wasn’t moving. Usually he runs over excitedly to eat the greens that I prepare for him, and at least watch the crickets jump by. But not last night. He continued to lie curled up in the corner, ignoring all the going’s on around him. This couldn’t be good! Was he slowly dying from the noxious melted dinosaur fumes? He rarely eats the crickets, preferring to stay skinny with the Beverly Hills salad diet. Could he be starving himself to death? Did Beardies develop anorexia nervosa?? My mind raced.

I left Super Hubs upstairs to tend to the Beardie, feeling heartsick. When it comes to pets, my husband and I have particular, unspoken roles. I buy and care for the pets, while he disposes of the dead ones, and finds new homes for the unruly. It works for us. I’m too tenderhearted to deal with dying or wayward creatures.

I went downstairs and prayed for Rex. Prayer is my thing, my gift, my passion. So I prayed Lazarus prayers, that God would raise him up out of his “sick bed.” I didn’t see any reason why God would have a problem with that. This little lizard has slowly won my heart, in curious ways. I pleaded to God for the sake of Little Squirt’s Beardie, as I know how brokenhearted my son would be without his beloved pet. I didn’t even want to imagine telling him.

About fifteen minutes later, Super Hubs called me from upstairs. Rex was totally back to himself! He was happily munching on salad in the corner of his tank, looking fit as a fiddle. Super Hubs thought that maybe he hadn’t been dying after all. He thought perhaps the Beardie had been catching an odd evening nap, or possibly had curled up because he’d been cold.

I don’t know. I prefer to think of Rex as having had a miraculous healing by God. I now look at him with tiny bit of awe, wondering what it’d been like to hang close to the edge of the Other Side. Had he heard harp music, seen a light, been beckoned by an angel? Hmmm. We’ll never know. I’m just so grateful he’s okay. And Little Squirt has no idea of any of the events of the evening. He’d been innocently playing wii in the basement the whole time.

Squeamish No More

I’ve been Director of Operations to Project Bearded Dragon now for about three weeks, and I’d call it a successful career so far. In other words, he ain’t dead yet. Little Squirt is the Hospitality and Activities Director and BFF to the Beardie, while I come alongside, providing financial support and overseeing clean-up and provisions.

The little reptile guy is growing me as a person. For example, I now run a cricket motel, dishing up yellow cricket food once a day to keep them alive.......so they can be eaten by the Beardie. And I actually cheer for the Beardie when he catches them. Who knew I’d have a taste for blood? I used to be an Insect Pacifist, carrying bugs from the house to be set free outside. It ruined my day if I stepped on an ant. I’d agonize that the little ant parents would grieve forever that their little ant child never came home. But now here I am, happily raising crickets for lizard food.

I’m also keeping meal worms in my fridge, right next to the salad dressing. I’m not even bothered by it in the least. That’s right, Me The Germaphobe, who’d rather forget her wallet than her hand sanitizer.

I don’t know if any of this is good or bad. What I do know, though, is that Little Squirt is deliriously, head-over-heels in love with his new pet. And sometimes your love for your kids overrides your phobic stuff.

Living, learning and growing, one day at a time.

Salsa On A White Shirt

It’s the first day of the New Year, and I’ve already spilled salsa on my white shirt. In past years, my Perfectionistic Younger Self might have received that spillage with dismay, perhaps fretting that it was a prediction of Mess and Frustration in this New Year. But not my Wiser Sightly-Older Self. With a quick whoosh of my stocking-stuffered Tide-To-Go stick, my shirt looks laundry-fresh. And I like to think, if I believed in omens, that the salsa-on-white predicts Spontaneity and Creativity in the months to come. Possibly even Passion and Zeal!

There are a few more tips I would give to my Perfectionistic Younger Self, if I could scrounge up a time machine and give her a few bullet-points to focus on this year. I would tell her:

~Don’t wish the winter away in your longing for spring. Enjoy the sun sparkling on snowflakes, the warmth of the cozy comforter, the marshmallows in the cocoa. Each day has it’s gifts. Slow down, notice, and appreciate.

~Don’t stress about unimportant things, like the drawer that’s untidy or the shabbiness of the chair you are hoping to replace. Your kids don’t care and God won’t ask you about those things. You can have a more perfect home when they move out. Look them in the eyes and enjoy them now. They’ll be grown and out before you know it. One of them almost is.

~Family dinners are sacred. Guard them jealously and make them happen. They matter more than a flurry of scheduled activities. The shared stories, laughter and prayer time is crucial for your childrens' sense of belonging. You’ll see lasting fruit in their lives from those dinners. Trust me.

~If you don’t like a group, then quit. It’s not for you, and that’s okay. Most things are less important than they seem at the time. Life is too short to agonize about what people think. And on that note; only take advice from the prayerfully wise. You’ll recognize them as the ones with your best interests at heart.

~Guard your tongue. You don’t have to have the last word, quickest wit, most impressive story. Just shhhhhhh more often.

~Remember and pursue your childhood first loves, like art and theater, writing and friendships. You’ll stay a more interesting person.

~One day last summer, my yoga class took our mats outside. As we lay on the grass on our backs, I watched the puffy cloud formations in the sky. I realized I hadn’t done that since I was a child. Do more of that this year. A lot more, my Perfectionistic Younger Self.

I'm hoping my Wiser Slightly-Older Self heeds this counsel as well, and has a Creatively Passionate, Sparkly Snowflake, Untidy Drawer, Casserole-Eating, Wise, Quiet, Child-like, Puffy-Cloud 2011. Happy New Year, my friends!