automotive hell

A couple of months ago I was driving my Volvo merrily down O'Shaughnessy, just about to turn onto the freeway, when suddenly the car lost power, including its power steering.  I maneuvered it across a lane of heavy traffic, wrestling with the wheel, and let it drift to a halt.  After a short moment of contemplation, I cancelled the appointment I was headed to down the peninsula, as my car did not feel highway-ready.  I gingerly turned the car back on.  Surprisingly, it drove me back home without doing anything else amiss, and there were no error codes.

We took the car to the Sober Husband's chosen mechanic, who did a variety of things, charging a variety of amounts, and who ominously told us to replace the transmission.  "They tell you," he intoned, "that transmissions last a long time, but that's not for San Francisco. That's for ideal driving conditions, you know, freeways."  He positively spat with contempt for the lazy driving ways of the non-San Franciscan.  "Here in San Francisco, you're driving up hills.  You're in traffic.  You're stopping and going.  You can't have a transmission last like that."

The Sober Husband and I paid him a large amount of money but weren't ready to fund a new transmission.  "I'd rather get a new car," I said bitterly.  I kept driving the Volvo.  

On one day I had some time to spare, while I waited for Iris über Alles and some privileged friends of hers to take a sewing class in scenic Hillsborough, and I found a pleasant garage in Burlingame where I had my oil changed.  I asked the mechanic to change the air filter as well, but he refused.  "This one's still good!" he said.  I found this refreshing, as at my last oil change, a less honest mechanic had tried to bully me into getting a new air filter, and this one was that same, unchanged one.  "You could make a passenger sick with this filter," lectured the sleazy mechanic at me, but this good one held it up and said, "I'm putting it back in."  

This pleasant fellow replaced my serpentine belt for me and changed out my transmission fluid, after I saw for myself how murky it was.  He shook his head when I told him that the car had just been at another mechanic's a week or two before, who hadn't noticed that the serpentine belt was about to break (I verified this with my own eyes) or changed the transmission fluid.  

The Volvo drove me to Burning Man and drove my friend N. back (I felt like a heel giving it to her, but she had to leave early for reasons of child custody, and I wasn't going to be able to cram all of our camp into the Volvo, so she left me her spacious minivan).  But then I was rushing down O'Shaughnessy yet again, with the intentions of speeding merrily all the way to Iris's school for an important meeting, and the car died yet again.  Once again I managed to get across a couple of lanes of busy traffic, and I was shaken.  If that had happened just a few minutes later, I would have been driving 70 or 75 miles per hour in heavy traffic on 280, and it could have caused a horrific accident.  

I had the car towed to my favorite mechanic, the mechanic of my heart, who spent some serious time with it.  "My advice to you," he said, looking me in the eye more seriously than anyone has who wasn't proposing marriage, "is to sell this car immediately.  And I'm not charging you for today."  According to this mechanic, the car hadn't thrown an error code in months, and he could not find anything to cause this intermittent failure.  I got him to tell the Sober Husband all this on the phone.

Gingerly I drove home.  The Sober Husband and I began a debate which has raged on through today, the debate about whether I should get a replacement car and if so, what the hell should it be.  I refuse to drive the Volvo, no matter what pressure I may get from the S.H., who complains that "I spend ten more dollars a day on gas now that you're driving my Prius."  "Well then," I retort, "get me that Mini Cooper I want."  

"Why don't you drive the Volvo?"

"That car is dead to me."  

"Lots of people drive unreliable cars.  Poor people do every day.  I did when I had the Monte Carlo."

It took me a while to develop a proper retort for that argument, but my psychiatrist handed it to me on a plate.  Now I can hiss superiorly, "My psychiatrist thinks you do not value my life highly enough!"  This tends to lead to a silence, a satisfying one on my end.

While all this has been raging on, I've been driving the Prius.  Today the Prius failed as I was attempting to drive to the gym from Lola's school.  It turns out that the dealership had found a problem with the accessory battery, and the skeptical Sober Husband, thinking he was being ripped off, felt that he would prefer to wait until it actually failed before replacing it.  

"I hate this car now, too," I said.  The poor Sober Husband was apologetic over the phone.  "You can take a cab to a dealership and buy a new car," he cajoled me, but I wasn't falling for that.  "I'm not buying any car unless you're right there to agree it's acceptable," I said.  After all, our marriage, unlike the typical one, is largely based upon an unending competition for the moral upper hand.  The failure to replace the accessory battery had put me in a powerful position, and I was not about to throw that advantage away.  But these cars, yes.  I am prepared to throw them away.

fears

A troubled Lola: "I saw something about 'meningitis epidemic' on the TV screen at the gas station, and I asked Iris, 'What is meningitis?' And she said, 'It's a deadly disease that runs in the family that you're most likely going to get in this epidemic.'" 

Me: "DO NOT ASK IRIS QUESTIONS EVER AGAIN."

how I burned

This year's Burning Man was more exhausting than usual.  Part of that was the weather:  we had a couple of days of "dustpocalypse", non-stop whiteouts leaving us crouched in what shelter we could find, holding scarves over our faces if we didn't have dustmasks, giving thanks for our goggles.  At one point, stumbling through a white-out to a porta-potty, I had a realization:  I had cleared a week and a half absence from my schedule, and in theory I could have gone anywhere.  It was my choice to hunker down in a duststorm.  "Next year, let's all go to Bali!" I proposed to my campmates on my return.  They hunkered down further, passed around a bottle of ancient port, and looked at me through reddened, dust-plagued eyes.

Other than the duststorms, the weather was lovely:  not too hot, not too cold, no storms (just a tiny sprinkling of rain, which caused one of my campmates to go into some hyper-storm preparation mode and rearrange our entire zone for some anticipated hurricane-level winds, all for naught).

My favorite piece of art this year was La Llorona, a life-size replica of a wrecked Spanish galleon, complete with books, bunks, art, dishes, rigging, and anything else you can think of other than parrots.  Exploring the different levels of the ship was the best thing I did this year; it made me so very happy to see the incredible level of detail.

Once again my camp gave out quests, and ahead of time I prepared the quest rewards, each tagged with a whimsical name and description of the powers it bestowed to its wearer.  It made me happy to see people wandering around on the playa wearing the name tags we'd slaved so hard to create (and Iris came close to rebelling at one point, saying plaintively, "Am I going to have to work in the sweatshop ALL DAY on my birthday??"  Loyal Lola whispered, "Sometimes I like working in the sweatshop" behind Iris's back).

Once again after I returned home, I spiked a fever out of the blue.  I've been miserable for the past four days, feverish, with an aching head, achy joints, and atrophying muscles.  But I'm ready to start planning for next year.

home vs. Burning Man

Last night I got home from a week and a half sojourn away at Burning Man.  I threw my dust-covered possessions in the garage and rejoined my family, who were kind enough to make a "Welcome Home Mommy" sign.

Readjustment to normal life is never completely easy.  At Burning Man, when I have insomnia, I can roll out of bed, put on a jacket, and walk a few yards to a bar where I will find friends.  At that bar, I do not have to pay for my drinks.

On the other hand, when I wish to visit a bathroom here, I don't have to walk half a city block to a portapotty.  Not to mention that a handsome man carried a cup of coffee, made just the way I like it, upstairs to me this morning...

don't go

Lola is concerned about me going to the Burning Man festival.  Last night she pleaded, "Don't go!  Muzzy is going to be set on fire!"

"I'm not going to be set on fire."

"You'll never come back!"

When I told her I was going to miss her, she whispered clandestinely, "You can just stay home."  I couldn't argue with that logic.

can it be?

Today Iris über Alles turned thirteen.  She's seemed like a teenager for a long time, years actually, so it seems odd that it took this long for her to reach the teens officially.

She's more than independent enough.  Right now she's researching far away boarding schools.  "Won't you miss me?" I say, pathetically enough, and she says, with great kindness, "Of course I will, but my education is important!"

fiber art

Today I speed-read "Mrs Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, neglecting my Burning Man preparations, in order to get to my new book club.  On my way there I realized I would be confronting this group of lovely, educated, articulate, well-read and refined women with a head full of crazy yarn.  Indeed, when I rang the doorbell, the reaction was, well, one of quiet shock.

One book lover rallied gamely.  "I've seen a lot of fiber art lately."

ask the Lola

Not long ago I solicited questions for Iris and Lola, and Lola is ready to answer her questions! Without further ado, I hereby present "Ask The Lola."

 Longterm reader Silliyak asked, "Should there be a 'Burning Woman' event? Where? What would it be like?"

Lola opines, "Yes, there should be one. I have no idea where it would be. Yeah. There would be no men, I guess, since it's 'Burning Woman.'"

 An anonymous reader asked, "Lola, is it fun to be the Fun Police?" Lola said, "Yes. Yes, it is!"

"Is there anything else you want to say about that, Lola?"

 "No. The Fun Police work alone."

 Another anonymous reader asked, "Lola, what is your favorite word?"

 "Eureka!"

A third anonymous person asked, "What is the best advice your sister has ever given you? What is the worst advice your sister has ever given you?"

"I don't know."

"Lola, you gotta say something."

"Seriously, I have no idea."

"Has Iris ever given you any advice?"

"Not that I can remember."

 Carroll asked, "What advice would you give to a nine-year-old girl who is starting 3rd grade at a new school where she doesn't already have any friends?"

"Make friends or be alone forever!"

"How would she make friends, Lola?"

"That's the hard part."

"Do you have any advice for her to succeed?"

"Stay in school. Don't tattle on people, or they'll be like [aarrrgh noises]. Yeah."

More questions from Carroll:  "Please describe some of your mother's cooking projects for us. Successes? Failures? Your personal Favorites? Do either of you like to cook too? Do you get to use the Aga?"

"Sometime I get to use the Aga. My favorite is da da da da, drum roll, umm, I think mashed potatoes. Definitely mashed potatoes. I don't like any kind of salad, not just that [Muzzy] makes but in general. I don't like salad. I don't really like to cook, but I like stomping mashed potatoes. Muzzy has made broccoli pasta, she has made ... why can't I remember anything you've made? You've made lots of food."

Jane asked, "Lola, I'm buying a new couch this week. What color should I get?"

"Oooh ooh ooh, couches. Orange! If not orange, then black."

Anything else you want to tell the readers, Lolz?

 "Pet the cats! Be happy! And that's a wrap."

the friendliest place in Bakersfield

My friend M. and I road-tripped down to far away San Juan Capistrano over the weekend, to hear the legendary Dick Dale on his alleged retirement tour (Dick D. seemed in top form, so enjoying performing and so very good that I suspect true retirement is not going to happen).  We decided ahead of time to break up our stay on the way back, rather than do the practically-the-full-length-of-California drive twice in one massive effort.  M. found us a charming hotel in Bakersfield, about halfway between S.J.C. and old S.F., ahead of time.

Once we found our lovely hotel in Bakersfield, we had a bit of trouble as our reservation had been mistakenly put into the system for the night before, and we'd been already charged as no-shows.  According to the very sweet desk clerk, this happens all the time with online reservation websites, and because those websites don't pass on to the hotel the customer's phone number, the hotel can't call to see if you are truly a no-show.  We were tired from our drive and from the heat (we Bay Area girls find the SoCal heat delightful yet draining), and we were pleasant despite this expensive screw-up.  The desk clerk wanted to be kind to us, and after M. said, "I just want to check in so we can have a drink" sadly, she asked "How many drinks do you ladies want?"  "Maybe four," said M. judiciously, and the clerk surprised us with four buy-one-drink-get-one-free certificates for the hotel bar.

Readers may not be surprised to learn that this gift was welcomed.  I'd planned this night to be my night off on my diet competition, and we intended to relax with some alcohol before soaking in the hot tub.  After we found our room, we headed to the bar.  "Do you have the certificates?" I hissed.

"Yes," M. hissed back.  "I haven't let go of them.  They haven't left my hand!"

Down at the bar, we found the jukebox painfully loud.  The side of the bar away from the jukebox was packed solid, so we were forced to sit on the louder side.   The young, female bartender took her time coming over to take our order, and gave us the impression that making drinks for us was the last thing she wanted to do.  M.'s inquiry about a margarita was greeted with the gleeful news that no blender drinks were available (you'd have thought she'd asked for a kidney).  Stalwart as ever, M. insisted we would accept our margaritas on the rocks and that they be made with Patron.  "We might as get expensive ones if we're getting free ones," she whispered.

Eventually the drinks turned up, and the bartender took great bureaucratic pleasure in explaining to us that we couldn't use our wealth of free drinks.  "Only one a visit," she said gleefully.

"Okay then," said M.  "We're going to have a drink, go to the pool, and then come back.  We'll make several visits."

"Only one per visit to the hotel," said the bartender, with even more joy at denying us.

After she bustled off to ruin someone else's fun, we conferred. "Obviously the desk clerk meant for us to drink all these tonight!  How can she do that?"  I figured out that surely we must each be able to use one of the cards.  We were two people, after all.  How could the bartender even know we were in the same room?  We could be in separate rooms.

That argument seemed to make the bartender even happier, giving her another chance to deny us.  I offered one of the cards to a very wrinkled old man sitting near us, but he said he'd used one already and would, like us, be denied.  Happily this man, who turned out to be named Don, joined us in excoriating the poor customer service of the bartender. "It's not like anyone would know that she'd taken more than one from you" he said.  "And you'd tell everyone to come here.  It would be better for the place."  He went on at length, and we nodded.  The bartender avoided our corner.

We did eventually get more drinks, and although it was not easy, we managed to order some crappy bar food.  Getting a glass of water from the bartender was particularly hard, and M. was a bit bitter that only one glass of water came (I offered to split it with her).  We confirmed that we intended to leave an uncharacteristically crappy tip.

The one joy of our evening was that M. put a lot of money into the jukebox.  "I played every rock song they had," she said happily.  "We're gonna hear a lot of Led Zeppelin."

The four deeply sunburnt young men playing pool were not pleased when M.'s jukebox selections started playing.  "What the fuck is this shit?"   They convened by the jukebox, staring at it.

Our margaritas had taken some effect, and we found this funny.  We whispered to each other.  "What is song?  What play this?  Where come from?"  Our joy was over, though, when the pool players moved the jukebox out of the wall laboriously and unplugged it, so all the Led Zeppelin M. had paid for was not heard.  Instead terrible, crappy country music rang out again, and the four very sunburnt scruffy men congratulated each other loudly.

A sign on the wall stated, in large letters, that this bar was "the friendliest place in Bakersfield."

"If this is friendly, I don't wanna see antagonism," I bitched.  We agreed that only Don, also passing through was friendly.  A woman passing through the door slammed it in my face as I headed out of the bar.

Once we left the immediate environs of the Friendliest Place In Bakersfield, things picked up.  Some men relaxing near the hot tub were eager to show us how to turn the jets on.  The weather was beautiful.  We remembered the kindness of the desk clerk and resolved to report to her that it was no good giving out those free drink cards.  

a long drive

The legendary surf music king, Dick Dale, is doing a farewell tour, and my friend Michele and I roadtripped down to see him perform.   We bought the tickets when we were both under the misimpression that San Juan Capistrano is near San Luis Obispo, on California's Central Coast.  We discovered later, to our dismay, that it was south of Los Angeles.

Oh, how the children laughed merrily at the stupidity of their dear mother.  "You have so far to drive!" jeered one, pointing at me and laughing deep, big belly laughs.  "How long?  Seven hours?

 Most of the drive was actually quite pleasant.  My friend and I chatted.  She read out loud outrageous quotations from Karl Lagerfeld.  We were fascinated by his breakfast routine:

The first thing I do when I get up, I have breakfast. I have two protein shakes made for me by my doctor--they have a chocolate taste and no sugar, of course—and steamed apples. That's all. I don't like anything else in the morning. I never drink anything hot; I don't like hot drinks, very strange. I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed. I can even drink it in the middle of the night, and I can sleep. I don't drink coffee, I don't drink tea, I drink nothing else.

We debated the steamed apples.  I felt that the best part of an apple is the crisp, satisfying crunch, and steaming the apple seemed insane.  Michele felt, on the other hand, that she enjoys baked apples and that a steamed apple could be good.  We agreed that we now feel compelled to steam some apples.  It must be done.

Around Los Angeles we, of course, hit traffic, and the last seventy five miles or so of our trip were a taste of stop and go freeway hell.  One of my contacts was irritating my eye, and I'd finished my giant bottle of water.  I kept reminding myself, "Just a few more miles."  But those miles took so long.  Finally we arrived at our hotel, where the sound of the freeway is always heard.  The weather is spectacular, the surf music was magnificent, Dick Dale is a wonder of the ages (but his son is not so great a drummer, clearly parental affection has clouded the eyes of the surf master).  Despite the jeers of the children, this is proving to be a delightful outing.

an elegant salad and descriptive faux pases

I usually prefer to buy salads in restaurants or at the one grocery store in town with a really great salad bar (the Molly Stone's in Pacific Heights), because it feels to me that homemade salads are usually not so good.  It's too expensive and too much trouble to buy and prepare so many fresh vegetables at home, whereas a restaurant enjoys the economy of scale.  Simpler salads usually are unsatisfying to me.  I want my salad to be complex.

There have been a few exceptions to this, interesting simple salads that I've made and enjoyed, but nothing that really made me think, "Here it is!  This is the salad of my heart, that I can make here at home."  But!  Then this week I finally made the salad that made me stop and say, "Oh my God, I have to say this myself, this is really fucking good... and it's so simple.  It's as good as something from a restaurant."

"It's better than something from a restaurant", said the Sober Husband, who sometimes rises to the occasion verbally.  He did not stay at that level of conversational grace, however, when it was time to clear the table.  In the kitchen, when he was putting away the food, he said loudly, "Hey!  There's more of this green glop left!"  I winced.  The "green glop" was pistou for the entree, soupe au pistou, made lovingly by me from organic fresh basil and really expensive Sicilian olive oil, and it tasted to me like one of the best things I'd ever made (I am completely over pesto; I'm all about its French version, pistou, which seems infinitely better to me).  

Iris paid the salad the compliment of having many servings, and it was basically demolished.  Lola, however, eyed it with distrust and was not interested in it.

Just two days later we had friends over for a small dinner party, and I made the salad again, but changing it up a bit, featuring asparagus instead of zucchini.  Once again it was loved and devoured, but before then, having a bit of trouble with the crowded table, the Sober Husband asked, "Can everyone just pass that stuff around", indicating the beautiful salad in a lovely, large, hand-made bowl.  I balked.  

"Please don't describe something I made as 'stuff'," I said.  "Can you call it a salad?"  I brought up the "green glop" remark which still stung.  "I work hard to make good food, and please don't call it 'glop' or 'stuff.'  If you can't think of the category word, like 'salad' or 'sauce', just call it 'food.'  'Food' works.  Say, 'Pass that food around.'"

The guests were bemused at this little contretemps and set forth on a discussion of whether "stuff" is dismissive or not.  But soon they began to eat, and instead the conversation moved to how good the food is and then to the fascinating topic of what does Mitt Romney really believe in his heart, and the dinner was on.

Hours later, as our guests were leaving, our friend said loudly, for the Sober Husband's benefit, "And thanks for that GREEN STUFF, it was really great!"

The Green Stuff Salad

large amount of fresh baby spinach, arugula, or other very pleasing fresh green

a vegetable to contrast (zucchini and asparagus are the two I have used)

1/2 cup or more fresh basil
1/4 cup pine nuts

olive oil  (must be very good, flavorful olive oil -- pick the murkiest cold pressed, extra virgin one on the shelf at the store)

a few lemons

a little sea salt (optional)

good Parmesan cheese

Steam the vegetable until it is soft but not mushy.  Set aside to cool.  (If you use a zucchini, slice it in half lengthwise to steam, steam about 5 minutes, and after it has cooled, cut it in as paper-thin slices as you can.  For asparagus, snap the hard end of the stem off by hand, steam the remaining stalks 5-8 minutes but do not overcook, then slice in short, diagonal pieces).

Toast the pine nuts in a little pan over a burner, frequently stirring.

Squeeze the lemons and measure the juice.  You want a ratio of 1:2 lemon juice to olive oil.  If you are making a small salad, whisk 1 T lemon juice with 2 T olive oil.  I made a big salad last night, with  1/4 C olive oil and 1/8 C lemon juice.  Pour any leftover lemon juice into a glass of water and drink it.

Toss the greens and basil leaves with the dressing.  Spread the steamed vegetable on top.  Sprinkle with the pine nuts. Sprinkle a bit of sea salt on top, if you like.  Take the good Parmesan and, with a vegetable peeler, peel off some nice curls of Parmesan.  Decorate the top of the salad with those.  Bon appetit! 

enjoy this blog while it lasts

"Is my last name on that blog?  Will you delete it when I run for president?" asked an ambitious child.   "I don't want it used against me."

"No, and I'll be dead by then."

"I'll delete it for you then."

in my neon armor

The Sober Husband and I collaborated on a project this year, if by "collaborate" you mean one person has an idea and the other one does 100% of the work.  My idea was a corset lit up with little programmable lights; I got the idea from an eighth grader at Iris's school, who made a jacket with wearable lights integrated into it.  "Thank you, I am so doing this for Burning Man!" I said to her sincerely, and she gave me a look which I took to mean that she was having a hard time knowing whether I was joking or not.

Over many trials throughout the past few months, the Sober Husband persevered in building a prototype.  The first version was on a corset, but projected out too far from my body, making me despair.  "I look so huge in this," I mourned.  "I'm sure it will look cool, but my vanity..."  Also, as several people noted, it looked like a dalek.

The S.H. was undaunted. "It's like on 'Project Runway', it's always the tailoring that is the problem."  We abandoned the idea of a corset.  For the next version, he took casts of my body and built a sort of plastic armor for the lights.  Eventually we arrived at the second version, after an interim attempt which sliced open my finger so theatrically while I was trying it on that I actually opened up an artery, dramatically spraying blood across the room.  Its running time is about ten hours, and its charging time is currently 24 hours (but the never-fazed Sober Husband thinks he can get that charging time down to 12 hours).

After the hardware was built, it was time for the software.  Everyone had ideas.  "I want it to say 'Iris!'" demanded a certain child.  I thought perhaps a Union Jack pattern would be good or a sort of rainstorm interrupted by lightning.  The Sober Husband liked a pattern like the matrix, of downward drifting strings of green lights.  Some combinations were too seizure-riffic.

Fully expecting some errors in the field out at Burning Man, the Husband fretted that it would not be robust enough to survive without him.  No one entertained the idea that I be expected to repair it.  I asked my camp's mailing list who could solder, and it turned out that several campmates intended to bring soldering irons to Burning Man.  A helpful campmate came over to our house and was trained by the Sober Husband on how to maintain the mechanism.

Tonight I'm giving it a test run in the home.  "Do normal things," the Sober Husband instructed me.  So as I write this, I am strapped into a neon cuirass.  The main things I am noticing are that it digs into the insides of my upper arms and that the lighting from below my chin is a bit reminiscent of Halloween.  I started making ghoulish faces, and little Lola was bemused, but quickly coopted.  It has not failed yet, nor caused anyone to have a seizure, but it's early days yet.

I won't ask for that again

Today I had an all day workshop, but over coffee before I left, I skimmed through the paper.  A recipe in the food section caught my eye,  a French soup featuring cranberry beans and other summer vegetables, drizzled with pistou.  I tore it out and handed it to the Sober Husband.  "If you can to to the grocery store while I'm at my class, I'll make this for you."

He took a look.  "This looks great!"

"Go to Calmart," I instructed him.  "I know they have cranberry beans there; I saw them.  Also, then you can go to the bookstore there and buy the book for Lola's bookclub."

He began to look harried.

When I came home around 5:30, a bit tired and low energy as I hadn't eaten since 9 AM and had walked halfway across San Francisco (during the lunch break I stood patiently in a sluggish line, at the only place near my class which sells food, behind a large clot of puzzled French tourists trying to figure out what a churro is, only to discover that this lunch spot was out of all the vegetarian food.  And why couldn't they have written that on the menu board and saved us all precious time, which we'll never have again??), I noticed that there were three bags of fresh cranberries on the counter, along with some other vegetables.

"Um, what did you get these for?" I asked.  It didn't seem incomprehensible to me that there were cranberries, as the children love cranberry pie and cranberry juice.

"For the soup!  And it was really hard to find them!" said the Sober Husband proudly.

"Sugarplum, you were supposed to get cranberry beans, not cranberries!" I said.

"I asked the children, and none of us knew what cranberry beans were," he said, crestfallen.

"Why didn't you ask someone in the produce section?  I know they have them; they were hard to miss!" I kvetched.

We put the cranberries in the freezer.  A bit later the Sober Husband asked me tentatively, "If I went and got the cranberry beans, do you still have enough energy to cook?"

I assured him, and he set off again.  This time he returned proudly with two bags of dried cranberry beans.

"Sweetheart, it was supposed to be FRESH cranberry beans.  I can't use those."

He looked at them.  The instructions on the bags clearly stated that the beans needed to be soaked overnight.  "Can you soak them and use them tomorrow?"

"No, this soup is just for FRESH vegetables."  By then an hour and a half had elapsed since I came home from my class.  I stomped into the kitchen and heated myself up some leftovers.  "Are you doing this so I'll never ask you to go to the store again?" I asked suspiciously.  

the 2 pack

As a result of a year of keeping to a rigid, strenuous exercise regimen, there have been a lot of changes to my body.  The one zone of my body which sums everything up nicely is my abdomen.

Up at the top of my abdomen, I have developed some very noticeable muscular definition.  I have the outline of the top of a lovely six pack.  But down a bit lower the entire situation dissolves into chaos, a flabby, stretchmarked mess with baggy skin, attesting to my having carried two massive, nine pound babies (one three weeks overdue, so a very long pregnancy with a very large baby, indeed).  Some damage was also done by my having carried around my "third baby" for so long (a massive benign tumor which, by the time I had it removed, was giving me many of the physical symptoms of being in the third trimester).  And of course it would be only honest to admit that I put on a lot of weight, first after I had Lola, when I was depressed and went on medication with the side effect of "unexplained weight gain" which was explained to me only after I'd put on twenty-five pounds, later when I was in chronic pain from my tumor and also from an ankle injury.  Losing most of that weight has been good for me and my body overall, but the lower abdomen is where the story of my excesses and sufferings has been written.

If you poke the top of my abdomen, around the two pack, it's like poking something inanimate.  The muscles are so strong and hard.  I welcome that sort of prodding; sometimes I bully the poor Sober Husband into admiring that little zone.  Just don't go prying around below it, where you'd expect to find the rest of a six-pack.  You're just going to depress us all.

special troubles

Lately the most noticeable thing going on in my life is that I'm playing the the Game On Diet competition.  I've been having a rough time this week, and it makes me feel guilty.

Meanwhile my teammates have been excelling, and I'm pulling them down.  It's like my team is Michael Phelps, and I'm a little rock tied to his ankle.  He's still winning, but he must look down at that rock and think, "*#@&#, I gotta get rid of this!"  My teammates insist they are not feeling that way, but I think they must be.

First I was sick.  I ran a fever for three days, and on one of those days, I did not exercise at all.  The second day I exercised lightly (which is allowed in this game if one is ill); the third day I made myself exercise vigorously.  Yesterday I went back to the gym for one of my normal hellish workouts, but still, that is one day with no exercise and one with baaaarely any exercising (running errands on foot).

Next, I went off to have my hair braided.  This screwed up my diet day largely because I couldn't meet my water drinking goal for the day (one of the most important rules is to drink three liters of water each day) because I spent six hours without drinking, while my head was being wrenched to and fro and things fastened to it.

Stupidly enough I only realized as I left the salon that I had just added several pounds of weight... which meant I couldn't make my weigh-in goal.  I felt like an idiot.  I weighed myself at the gym, and I had gone up over three pounds, three pounds of yarn, some little metal clips, and hair extensions.

That evening I petitioned everyone in the game.  "I have a Burner problem," I said.  "I got my hair braided for the playa, and it weighs over three #(@& pounds!"  I attached a photo.  Everyone in this game has been to Burning Man, and they all empathized.  Even the people on the other teams agreed that I should be able to adjust my weight by several pounds to compensate for the huge weight on my head, although the word "freak" was used.

Struggling on, I persist as well as I can.  I must not be a rock, or if I am a rock, I must be a pebble.

my head is ready

Today I spent six hours having my hair microbraided, extensions put in, and several skeins of exotic yarn woven into the braids.  My head is Burning Man ready, but the rest of me isn't.

It's early to get this done; I have another two weeks before it's time to go.  But it's practically impossible to get an appointment for braiding the week before Burning Man, and also it's very difficult to sleep on the pained, abused head for several nights after the braiding is done.  I may as well go through the uncomfortable nights here at home, so I can get whatever sleep is possible at the event.

When I drove home, I ran across Iris and Lola trudging up the hill with our friend who was babysitting them.  I honked and called to them.  They were considerably reluctant to cross the street and get into the car, frozen in spot staring at the masses on my head.

At home, our new kitten gave me a wide berth. "Look, Zorro is afraid of me!" I said.  

"I can't stop staring at it," said Lola.

"Can I pet it?" asked Iris.

The negative note came from the poor, patient Sober Husband.  Taking a deep breath, he said slowly to himself, "It's only temporary."

ask the supporting characters, er, stars

"Do you remember when you did 'Ask The Lola' on your blog?" said little Lola wistfully the other day.

"Of course!" I said.

"Can you do that..." Lola began to ask, but she was interrupted by her big sister.

"Ask Iris!  Do 'Ask Iris' again!  That was better!"

So submit your questions, to either Iris, Lola, or both, and we'll get back with answers!

soundbites from around the home

- I talked to the Sober Husband about how this health competition I am in, with friends, has upset my cooking mojo.  Previously I'd been cooking a lot, and the Sober Husband would arrive home to find me slaving over my beloved Aga, but now I'm eating things like low fat cottage cheese with fresh scallions or goatsmilk yogurt for dinner.

The Sober Husband burst out passionately with "I'd rather have a fat wife that cooks than a thin wife!"  I hugged him consolingly.

- One of the offspring was holding forth about how wrong it is that parents can name children before their personalities were evident.  "I should have been named Evil Villain of Awesomeness!"

- Sweet Lola is worried about her mother's sojourn to Burning Man.  "You need to bring lots of sunscreen, water, and A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!" Lolz said repeatedly.

"I'm not planning to start any fires, Lolz," I said, but Lola was adamant and Iris scoffed. "Its Burning Man; there's going to be stuff on fire everywhere!"

"Yes, but I'm not setting it on fire."

Iris rolled her eyes sarcastically.  "BURNING... MAN.  It says 'burning.'  There's stuff on fire everywhere."

the game continues

It's getting towards the end of the first week in the four week-long diet game I'm engaged in, and I'm having mixed results.

The rules allow for one meal off and a whole day off, and these are the only allowable drinking occasions each week.  On our semi-weekly date night, the Sober Husband and I went to Bar Agricole, and I explained my plan to him ahead of time.  "I'm going to try to have only one cocktail and call this my meal off.  If it's so good I have to have another one, it's my day off.  But don't let me go wild."

At Bar Agricole, the drinks were delightfully tempting.  "We make our own bitters," said our waiter proudly.  "It makes no sense to take so much care with a cocktail and then just pour some nasty old bitters in."  He made a disgusted face.  I've never myself been disappointed with store-bought bitters, but I was happy to sample the precious, carefully crafted drinks with the house-made bitters, and after the first I said to the Sober Husband, "We're calling it my day off."

I felt later proud, as I only consumed a bowl of white corn and padrones soup (the single best soup I have ever had at any restaurant), two cocktails, and a glass of Moscato while splitting a cheese plate with the Sober Husband.  "That's pretty good for a day off from my diet," I bragged.  But at the gym the next day, the scales told another story.  Far from losing any weight, I'd gone up six pounds.

How can that be?  Was it hormonal?  Was it the effects of the fattening alcohol upon my alcohol-starved body, just coming off a long month of no drinking?  Whatever it was, it was depressing.  My diet teammates rallied behind me, encouraging me to hang in there.

I tried to remember how far I've come already.  I've been cleaning out my closet of clothes I can no longer wear, as they hang upon me too loosely.  I got the most treasured compliment I've had yet lately, from a friend who mourned, "The sad part about you losing weight is your ass.  You had the greatest ass... so large, but so great."  I don't know why I like that compliment so much, but I do.

Whether I lose any more weight or not on this diet, the game is definitely influencing me.  Tonight we came home late after taking Iris to see "Beasts of the Southern Wilds" (which achieved the previously-unthought of accolade of three thumbs up, approved by the Sober Husband, Iris über Alles, and me in a rare moment of cinematic accord).  While the Sober Husband climbed into bed, I changed clothes and climbed on my rowing machine.  "My opponents are losing weight," I hissed.  "I have to exercise!"

healthy living will kill me

Today I woke up with a pounding headache.  Normally when this happens (and it happens far more than I'd like), my "supportive" spouse points to something I did, usually involving alcohol, which made the headache my fault.  But yesterday I exercised vigorously, ate healthily, and consumed absolutely no alcohol, so how can I be blamed?  "Could you be allergic to something?" mused my husband (no doubt in order to get the blame right back on me, for having eaten something I should have known not to eat).

Healthy living is not helping my insomnia, also.  Last night I was wide-frigging-awake in the middle of the night, bored, and restless.  Usually after I determine that I have no chance of falling asleep again for the foreseeable future, I pull out my laptop (conveniently placed under the bed) and amuse myself online.  But!  As part of my healthy living competition, I am required to get seven hours of sleep a night.  Playing online would mean losing points not just for myself, but for my team.  The rules of the game take insomnia into account, and an insomniac may count her time spent lying awake fretting as sleep, so long as she stays prone, in the dark, with her eyes shut.  Taking one for the team, I laid there in the dark, with my eyes shut, for a very long time.  Eventually some sleep came, but not long after that, the Sober Husband arrived, eager to wake me up (strange as it may seem to some of you, he has a thirst for my company and has taken to waking me up in the mornings in the hopes I will get up and talk to him before he goes to work).

After I dragged my poor, aching, sleepy head downstairs to swallow ibuprofen and drink coffee, as well as to have a healthy breakfast of goatmilk yogurt with some nuts and dried cranberries,  I emailed my team members about my insomnia (the rules of the game require me to communicate daily with team members and our adversaries).  "I laid there and laid there, thinking of the points," I whined.  Thanks poured in by email from team members, who took a brief break from sharing tips on how to largely survive on Greek yogurt to congratulate me on my competitive spirit.

Now my top goal for the day is to vanquish this headache so I can work out (daily exercise is a key component of this health competition).  Honestly I think what my body is crying out for is a bottle of  blanc de noirs and some fried food.  It certainly doesn't seem to thrive upon clean, vigorous, honest living.

so much virtue: does it call for a renaming?

Recently I went to a fabulous tiki party held by a very old friend, someone I met back in the mid-nineties, and I saw a lot of people I used to run around with back when I was livelier and childless (and many of them have, like me, married and spawned and live a G-rated existence for the most part).  At the tiki party my iron willpower was much on display, as I was on a liver vacation (no alcohol for a month whatsoever to let my much-abused liver regenerate long before going to Burning Man).

"You really need to rename your blog," said more than one old friend.

"I know," I said.  "I especially need to change the description, where I say I don't get enough exercise.  Now I exercise all the time; I get panicky if I can't work out."  Everyone laughed.  I didn't mention it, but the "thinks too much" part of this blog's description is, more sadly, no longer accurate.  My brain has atrophied over the years, alas, and I am continually reminded by my spouse and children of how little I think.

And the iron willpower will continue to be exercised, thanks in large part to my attending that party.  A couple of old friends I hadn't seen in years were chatting about a game they are playing.  Being a gamer of sorts, I wanted to find out more about it, and it turns out they were in a diet competition.  For four weeks teams diet, exercise, drink a metric fuckton of water, and taunt one another, and then the winners are declared at the end.

"It's so much fun!" one said over and over again.

"Get ready to pee a lot," said the other.  "And it's so much fun."

I was interested.  "We're starting a new game soon," they told me.  I followed up, and now it's on.  My team is called the Jaguars, and we are taking on quite a few other teams in the "Game On Diet", www.thegameondiet.com.

Over the weekend I tried to figure out the basics of this rather ambitious program.  "Wait a minute," I said after I got the impression this diet banned drinking. "This is terrible!  I'm just coming off a liver fast, and I need to get my alcohol tolerance back up before Burning Man.  How do you other lushes handle this?"

A friend given to the consumption of fine alcohols reassured me.  "You can drink on your day off, have a drink with your meal off, and I usually take a 25 point hit for drinking on another day."  I decided I could live with that.

This diet is more than a diet; it tries to harness the power of competition to reform a person's life.  We are supposed to give up a bad habit and acquire a new one, a habit which is unrelated to food.  I pondered this.  I already took up exercise, cut back on my drinking, and have been virtuous in no end of ways; what else do I need to do?  I'm not thrilled with becoming any more virtuous than I currently am; I know my limits.

Finally I decided to make my good habit writing every day and my bad habit asking my husband to get things for me, a habit acquired after my hysterectomy and reinforced after my terrible ankle injury.   "That's pretty vague," criticized the husband.  But he was able to see the upside.  "Does this mean you'll stop asking me to get out of bed and turn off your bedside light?"  I didn't bother to mention, yet again, that my stubby little arms can't reach the bedside light.  I just said, "Yes.  Yes, it does."  Pleased, he wandered off to do whatever it is that he does of an evening, and I went off to drink more water, eat sensibly, write, and no matter what, not ask my husband to help me with small things I could theoretically do myself.

I am under surveillance

Over the last year I decided it was time to start building a new social life for myself, outside the children.   I had the horrible realization that I was on track for one hell of an empty nest syndrome when the children leave home.  I should have more of a life outside the home; the children are growing up rapidly and needing me less, and my purpose for living is proportionately dwindling.

The Sober Husband supports me in this goal but does not share it.  He mused recently over how he doesn't need to socialize.  "I guess I don't like people as much as you do."

Not everyone is supportive.  Iris über Alles grills me over where I go, what I do, and who accompanies me.  One new friend became known as "Mommy's creepy friend", with a heavy implication that it was stupid for me to spend time with a "creepy friend" when I could be with my darling children.  "Why did you have us, if you didn't want to spend time with us?"

And now the heavy hand of the law has intervened.  Lola has formed the "Fun Police."  Every time I have too much fun (mostly meaning that I go out and stay out past the time Lola falls asleep), I get a ticket and a very stern lecture.  Lolz recently took the time to document the Fun Police's anti-mommy policies:

 This is the guide of the FUN POLICE: STOPPING FUN SINCE LAST WEEK OR SOMETHING.

A ticket
A ticket is a warning from the FUN POLICE. If you stay out too late for an event, you will get a ticket. You need not keep track of your tickets, the POLICE will take care of that for you. If you get five tickets, you get a penalty which is a stern note from the Chief of POLICE, a guilt trip about it, and stern-ness from Lolz.  Your tickets are kept track of in the Ticket List. Each person ha a seperate Ticket List, and your Lists are refreshed when you get five tickets.

What are events?
To put it simply, events are any type of party or bar or camp you go to.

Can I lose tickets?
No. NO-DIDDLY-GODDAMN NO.

Do you like milk?
Yes.
-The chief of FUN POLICE

What do you look like?
We are spheres with arms twice the size of us that fly in the air. We are robots too.
HAHA NOT!

Do you like pastries?
Yes. Continue with important questions.

Resonable hours to come home
Resonable hours to come home are from 6:00 to 11:00. If you come home later than that, you will get a ticket. If you come earlier, you will not get a ticket. If you come home earlier than 6:00, you won’t get a ticket either.

THIS HAS BEEN A BOOK FROM THE FUN POLICE: STOPPING FUN SINCE LAST WEEK OR SOMETHING.

harsh truths

A good friend of ours has four dogs, little bulldogs who are unruly and high energy.  Our friend and her husband have elaborate systems for containing them and separating them (certain subsets of the four dogs are particularly volatile and must be avoided), and essentially the main thing you notice when you enter their home is that these dogs take up so much of our friend's life with their exuberant craziness.

Recently she reached a point of despair and found a powerful dog trainer to visit her dogs.  I stopped by that afternoon, and the dogs looked shellshocked.  Far from jumping up on me and licking me, as they normally would, and whining and whirling about, they were lying scattered on the ground, staring blankly into the middle distance with a stunned expression.

My friend was gleeful.  She told Lola and me about the trainer.  "He said, 'You're letting these dogs make all the decisions, and the problem is they don't make good decisions.'"  Lola and I nodded.  The dog trainer forced the most aggressive dog to sniff the most bullied dog's butt, making the bully to act like a caring pack member.  When he and our friends walked the dog, he scolded our friend.  "Don't say good dog!  These are not good dogs!  They are assholes!"

Our friend laughed and laughed.  The dogs laid still, evidently processing their morning of discipline, their reign of misrule sadly coming to a close.

what is this feeling?

There's something strange going on.  After months of being in a deadly funk, the old Drunken Housewife has been seen smiling and even laughing, sometimes dancing a little in the kitchen while she's cooking.   Could this be... happiness?


It's somewhat of a sudden onset, this feeling of pleasure at being alive.  Just a few days ago I was ranting angrily over the butt-ugly new fence which mars the beauty of my little yard, raised at my neighbor's behest (I had to kill all my beloved jasmine vines AND pay half the cost of this #*@&! ugly fence!!).  Not that long ago, I semi-politely asked the Sober Husband, "Please do not say anything which could be considered REMOTELY STRESSFUL.  Thank you."  It seems like just the other day I was sunk in despondence upon the couch.

What gave me this turn-around?  Some credit goes to the children, who have been so charming and funny and well-behaved lately.  Some goes to our current batch of feral kittens, so clever and smart and beautiful.  The Sober Husband is always a source of support.  I've made some new friends lately; I've been taking some social risks which have paid off generously.  I've been exercising like a fiend (I've lost 37 pounds), and the endorphins are powerful.  But in the end, who can say why a person is happy?  Better to enjoy than to over-analyze.

catching up

I've been off in a funk, except when I was up at Camp Mather for our annual week of rusticating without internet or cellphones.  It's been a rough time lately for me, but I've been doing my best, exercising like a fiend, socializing feral kittens, and reading some good books.  Here's a quick alert of the state of affairs:

Lola has been doing well, enjoying some time now school is out with her oldest friend (sometimes referred to as "Lawyer, Jr." here), which has the added bonus of driving her older sister crazy.  Iris über Alles hates Lawyer, Jr. and views it as a crime against humanity that Lawyer, Jr. is not just allowed but invited to come into our home.

Iris has formed some powerful ambitions for the future after a weeklong field trip to Washington, D.C.  She's studying for the SATs, teaching herself a programming language, and attending a mock trial summer camp.

The Sober Husband is working diligently, dabbling in advising some friends who have start-ups, dealing stoically with a very long commute, and has finally gotten back into hobbying.  He's making me a programmable corset, which will have over 200 lights flashing into various, changing colored patterns.  This is for me to wear at Burning Man this year, where the question is whether it will be sturdy enough for the extreme weather conditions and idiot-proof enough for me to keep it going while he's off in another state.

solving the problems of the future

Iris über Alles has become an expert at a fairly obscure academic competition, "International Future Problem Solvers."  Tweens and teens compete in groups of four.  They are told well ahead of time a broad topic, such as "coral reefs" or "human rights", which they then research in an attempt to gain a broad mastery of the huge topic.  At the actual competition, they are given a word problem from the future (called "the fuzzy" in Futures speak).  The team identifies a manageable part of the future problem, imagines a practical solution, and writes up their solution eloquently in a special format.  At competitions, they must also act out their solution.

Iris's team is a particularly volatile one.  At an especially heated practice, one enraged member of the team, who shall remain unidentified, broke the laptop of another member.  At some point in the season, a coach noted that this team had great potential if they could just stop squabbling, but Iris demurred. "We do our best work when we are fighting."

This pack of twelve year-old hotheads were selected to compete at the state level and entered into a crazed schedule of studying.  The theme was "international trade barriers", and initially I thought I would be able to help.  After all, I did go to Stanford, and while I was there, I got A minuses in International Business Transactions, International Law, and Economics.  So you'd think I could be an asset to a tween learning about trade barriers, and if you thought that, like me you'd be totally wrong.   It turns out that anything I had learned had become completely obsolete.  "You don't even know what the Doha Round is, do you?" jeered Iris repeatedly.  Stung, I went off to consult the internet and learned that my beloved GATT and all its rules and regulations I had so painfully mastered had been replaced while I'd been off breastfeeding.

I took to asking every adult I knew whether they knew what the Doha Round is, and not a single one did.  Meanwhile Iris had nothing but contempt for the idiots surrounding her, and as her scorn grew, so did her stress levels.  The team set themselves a hugely ambitious practice schedule involving hours of work every day, on top of their schoolwork, and soon they were feeling about the way I did when I was a tough litigator who cried in the shower in the mornings before putting on her expensive Italian suits because she felt she could never, never, never get all her work done.

We were all on tenterhooks as the state competition occurred.  I worried that if the team failed, Iris would be deeply depressed ("If we don't win, all this work will have been for NOTHING",  Iris said direly many times) but that if they won, perhaps they'd be even more filled for contempt for those of us who didn't even know what the damn Doha Round was.  In the end Iris's team placed first in the state of California in their age division.  They had been set the problem of solving Italy's financial problems, and Iris's team proposed violently removing all of Italy's minerals, a sort of super-fracking of the future.  I am sure I will be strongly opposed in the future when Italy gets around to this, but the judges were particularly charmed by the skit (Iris played an Italian environmentalist protesting this solution).

Now Iris is at the international level, in Indiana, all week.  This time the team took a more relaxed attitude towards competing and didn't put much energy into researching the topic, Big Pharma.  Supposedly some teams from Connecticut have the thing sewn up, winning year after year, so Iris moved her relentless focus from winning to collecting swag.  The teams all bring little items representing their home region for bartering with the others, and Iris was hellbent on finding the Australians, who supposedly bring little chocolate koalas and tiny tins of vegemite and who are the most desired trading partners.  Iris, armed with Google t-shirts, Ghirardelli chocolates, and an actual California license plate, fully intends to trample the other American teams to capture the coveted chocolate koalas.

Meanwhile on the home front, I got an email yesterday informing me that our share of the bill for having the team compete on the international level was $2,084.04.  I had been expecting it to be more like one thousand and was taken aback.  "For this much money, I better get one of those damn chocolate koalas," I bitched.  "Future Problem Solvers, more like Financial Problem Creators."  Meanwhile Iris, not content with having reached the international level of competition in one academic discipline, plans to take up competing in the Model U.N. next year.  "I'm going to get to go to  New York if I win!" she said.

health, so damn elusive

I've been felled by an annoying bug, which has left me with fevers, pounding headaches, aching joints, and a general inability to go to the gym or do anything much.  You'd think a person who devoted so much of her existence to healthy living would be actually healthy, but noooo.

Luckily I was able to reschedule dinner with one of this blog's loyal readers who came to San Francisco and rally a bit.  Here's what happens when someone who has actually written comments on this blog over the years comes to town:  they are shown the Aga and must stand there while I explain what features I actually know how to use.  Various animals make hellish rackets and wander about.  The Sober Husband has to be nagged to get drinks for people, and as the evening wears on, the reader/commenter starts serving the drinks.  After enough drinks, the Drunken Housewife starts unsolicitedly talking about her sex life.  Good times, good times!  At least you can count on getting plenty to eat if you come over here.

healthy living

For the past eight months, I've been exercising like a fiend. After I gave up the World of Warcraft, I took up frequenting the gym, lifting weights and pushing myself to new extremes on the exercise machines. You'd think by now I'd be a sleek greyhound of a woman, and indeed I have some fairly impressive gym-toned muscles, nestled in amongst the fat, but I'm getting out of breath often. A person who does a full hour of cardio, leaving her literally dripping sweat, nearly every day of the week should be able to climb a flight of stairs without getting winded.

 I have always had a funky heart, and I haven't had a cardiological workout since the 90's. Although my cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides and other sundry measures of health have always been fabulous, I've always had an arrhythmia. On top of that, I had a life-threatening infection of the heart in college, myocarditis, which caused me to lose both a fabulous job and a somewhat less fabulous boyfriend, who thought I was being a hypochondriac and took off on an extended road trip, and then felt too freaked out to try to make up for it when he realized I wasn't faking after his return (sidenote: he looked me up a year or two later, interested in trying again, but by then I was with Husband 1.0, the Scotch-Drinking Husband, so I had the last laugh in theory).

 So the question arises: could it possibly take longer than eight months of strict and strenuous exercise to make up for a couple years of Warcrafting sloth? Or is my heart acting up again, and if so, should I be exercising this much without an EMT standing by? Who knows? I went for an EKG yesterday and some bloodwork, for which I had to fast and drive Lola to school in rush hour traffic WITHOUT HAVING HAD A SINGLE CUP OF COFFEE.

 I've had a lot of EKGs in my life, so many I couldn't even estimate them (I had one once a week during my myocarditis troubles), but it's been a very long time, and it wasn't the same. First of all, the technology for attaching electrodes has advanced, and it was a lot less gooey than I remembered. Next, I certainly didn't have the tech need to ask me politely, "Could you please lift your left breast?" back in the old days. Sadly both gravity and breastfeeding have wreaked some damage, and what was once one of our nation's premiere racks is decidedly less perky and awe-inspiring.

 Just going for the EKG and bloodwork made me feel better, as it felt like a concrete first step towards figuring out the state of cardiological affairs.  I finished up the day with a good half an hour of hard, sweaty exercise and not a single drop of alcohol. "You're doing your best," I reflected as I showered. "Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, exercise... who could do more? Just put on a push-up bra and wait for the test results."

the future! the fabulous future!

So the present is a bit hard for me, and I'm self-medicating in the finest ways I know: endorphins and gin. Six days a week I've been going through a grueling workout at my gym, lifting weights and doing lots of cardio, and it has a huge impact on those around me. "Have you been to the gym yet?" inquires the Sober Husband over the phone. "I think you should go to the gym." Evidently I'm much more pleasant and relaxed on my gym days, and I have to admit, endorphins make a person feel perkier. [It's time to rewrite the description of this blog, since for the past eight months, I've been working out like a fiend. I get enough exercise for 2-3 people].

 I'm also looking to the future. Burning Man is at the end of the summer, and it's a wonderful, crazy relief from everyday life. And! The Aurora Theatre in Berkeley is putting on a play by one of my two favorite playwrights next season. June is a long time away, but a Neil LaBute play is worth some anticipation. I could use a few things between now and Labor Day, as well as between Labor Day and June, for purposes of anticipation. Help me out with some suggestions in the comments for Things To Hang On To See (flying cars? Zombie apocalypse? Election of Iris über Alles as president?]

a rough time, part II

I try not to be a drama queen, but it's a hard time here these days.  Long-term readers may remember that last year at this time the old DH had a bit of a crisis, and as the anniversary of that rough time rolls around, the memories have been hard to quash.  Meanwhile there have been some other stressful events, and during that time, Al, my needy skeletal cat, the being who most loved and needed me in my life, has passed on.

This is why I haven't been writing of late; it's difficult to feel amusing.  I've been devoting myself to exercise and caring for a feral cat named, unimaginatively enough, "CatCat", exercising (endorphins are the best form of self-medication), and ploughing through book after book.  The eloquent Florence of Florence and the Machine has captured how I feel better than I could every say:  

a rough time

I came downstairs one Saturday morning to discover that Al, our skeletal orange cat (familiar to long-term readers of this blog as The Cat Who Is Allergic To His Own Teeth), had suffered a stroke in the night.  Poor Al had lost control of his hind legs, and his body temperature was low.

After a family discussion regarding whether to euthanize poor Al or to keep him at home quietly, it was clear there was no support for taking him to the vet for a clinical way out.  I spent most of the day holding him (which was not the most pleasant of tasks, as the poor animal had no control over his bladder).  At night we did leave him with Iris while the grownups ventured to a party (our party spirit was of course boosted by getting text messages from Iris constantly describing poor Al's decrepit condition).

We got home around 2:30 AM, and I went straight to Al, who was resting quietly.  I snuggled him up on my chest, where he always wanted to be, and held him.  Eventually I dozed off for a few hours, and when I woke up around 5:30 AM, he had passed on.  Rest in peace, poor Al.  You never did get a fair shake in life.

Al was found as a kitten, with one sibling, in a puddle of oil in a mechanic's shop in San Francisco.  His sibling passed away as a little kitten, and Al himself only lived to seven.  His health problems were endless and strange:  he couldn't retract his claws, he never weighed more than five pounds (even when we embarked upon a program of giving him unlimited canned food), he sneezed and drooled, he shedded constantly, flea preventive medicines didn't work for him...  Al's health improved after we finally ponied up $1,800 to have virtually all of his teeth pulled, and he had a few relatively good, but still skeletal, years.  He was always a companion to our various foster kittens (whereas the other cats generally can't be bothered with them).

In a rare moment of grace, Al was captured for posterity just the week before he died, by the amazing Thomasina deMaio:

Al was also active on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/allofalbert  Heartbreakingly his voice has gone silent far too soon.  Rest in peace, Al.  You are missed.

quotes of the day

Twelve year-old Iris uber Alles is stoked to go on a Service Learning expedition to a senior citizen home.  "I don't care if those old people like it; I'm gonna win at bingo!  They get to play bingo all year, and I only play every six months!"

As Iris wandered out of the room,  continuing to mutter about her desire to trounce each and every aged resident at bingo, I urged the Sober Husband to come look at our cats, Frowst and Henry, who were curled up on adjoining pillows.  "Look!  Look!"

"I'm looking," he said in a monotone, without looking up from his iPad.  "Look-how-cute."

"I see you, and you are not looking!  Look!  Look!"

Finally he glanced at the cats and said, "We should take pictures and put them on the internet!"

"Now you're being sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic; I'm being condescending."

sending him off in style

There's a new season of "RuPaul's Drag Race," and the children and I are enthralled.  The Sober Husband has only ever watched one episode, and that was when he was sucking up to me after a spat.  But even by leaving the room when it is screened, he can't escape the impact of this oddly absorbing game show.  Today, when he left, I bade him farewell with a jaunty, "You bettah werq!"  Nonplussed, he looked to little Lola.

"Lola," I instructed her, "Say goodbye to your father with something RuPaul says.  From now on, we say goodbye to him like RuPaul."

"Doesn't RuPaul ever say 'have a nice day?'" said the uncooperative Sober Husband.

Eventually a yawning little Lola let out a "don't eff it up", and the Sober Husband headed off to the more sensible environs of Silicon Valley.

advances in education

When I studied French, we memorized a horrible poem about an ant and a grasshopper and phrases like, "Mom, please bring me a bowl of coffee" (according to our textbook, French teenagers were served coffee in bed by the bowlful by their doting French mothers).  Never did we learn any phrases that seemed realistic.  When I studied Russian in college, my favorite serving suggestion phrase which we memorized was "Since I was a child, I dreamed of working on a collective farm."  One of this blog's readers enchantingly remembered that she'd had to memorize that same phrase as a budding Russian student.  Fun as it was to say, that sentence didn't seem to have any potential for helpfulness.

I'm happy to report to all of you that at Iris uber Alles's progressive private school, the first year  Japanese curriculum is much more practical.  Glancing over a page of Iris's work, I saw that she had been assigned to translate  the phrase, "My ex-husband is an attorney."  "Now there's a useful phrase," I thought.  Many of Iris's classmates will be able to use that, assuming they move to Japan after their divorces.

meowing up the wrong tree

Another crazy cat lady that I know, whom I have grown to like and enjoy, has always taken an interest in the Sober Husband.  The first time we met her, we went to her house to pick up a troubled, undersocialized cat, and after we left, Iris uber Alles said bluntly to her father, "That lady likes you.  She was flirting with you."  The Sober Husband, as usual, was completely oblivious.

Recently I ran into this woman again, and after we caught up by exchanging anecdotes of our current foster challenges, she started asking about the Sober Husband.  "Does he help with the cats? "  Looking very intensely into my eyes, she asked, "Does he have a favorite cat?"

When I came home, I repeated this to that famed cat-hater, the Sober Husband.  "And she asked me, 'does he have a favorite cat?'"  I was laughing so hard I was at risk of choking.  

He shook his head.  "Clearly she doesn't know me.  She may like me, but she doesn't know me."

Tears came to my eyes as I laughed and laughed.  "I felt like saying, 'Sweetie, if he ever wriggles out of this marriage, he's not going to sign on with another middle-aged crazy cat lady.  It's gonna be a cat-free life for him!"

homophobia, near our home

The house just two doors up from ours is being sold, and naturally all of us who've lived here longer than a couple of years are terrified that it's going to be gutted and we'll have to endure another year of construction.  Our collective nerves are still frayed from the psychopathic little contractor who gutted and rebuilt the bungalow a bit further up on the block.

My next door neighbor B. and I were gossiping about the sale the other day, sharing stories of potential buyers we'd met.  Just that day B. had met the couple who are the fall-back buyers, who came by to yearn at the almost-theirs house.   "It's a lesbian couple; they'll get it if the sale falls through," he said.

"That's nice.  Maybe they like cats," I said, thinking of the various crazy cat-lady couples I've met (it's a very special thing, when two crazy cat ladies fall in love).   I live in fear that a cat-hater will move into our block and get annoyed that two of my cats roam through everyone's yards.

B.  made a face.  "Lesbians can be awfully noisy."

"Homophobe!"

He burst out laughing.  He's a gay man, living with his long-term love.

I pressed the point.  "Homophobia, right here in the Castro!  I should report you."

Through his fit of laughter, B. asked, "Report me?  To whom?"

"GLAAD."  I walked up my stairs and turned back. "The HRC.  I don't know.  I'll find someone to report you to."  I could still hear his laughter as I let myself in my front door.

mother's little helper

In the grocery store today, I mused, "What else do we need?"  Sweet little Lola murmured solicitously, "Gin?  Do we have enough gin?"

appalled

I cannot believe that in the year 2012 contraception is controversial and one of the big issues facing America. I was just a baby when the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut,381 U.S. 479 (1965), forbidding states to outlaw contraception, and now I have to worry about my daughters' access to contraception in an increasingly woman-hating society. It's like science fiction, like Margaret Atwood's dystopian "A Handmaiden's Tale" is coming true.

 When I had a horrendously painful ovarian cyst as a teenager, my doctor put me on the pill to prevent further cysts. The pill was expensive, and it was difficult for me to pay for it. I remember one terrible day, where I stood for a long time in a drugstore, shifting from foot to foot, while I pondered whether to get a refill on my prescription or not. I didn't have enough money for both food and my medicine, despite the fact that I had two part-time jobs and an austere student lifestyle (no cable to cancel, no expensive shoes). It was either the pill or being able to eat for the next several days, and that was not a pleasant choice.  When I hear a politician condescendingly state that there is no such thing as women who can't afford birth control, my blood pressure skyrockets.

 There's a terrible shaming of women who take the pill, who are supposedly sluts and prostitutes. Why does getting a prescription change someone's sexual activities into "prostitution"? A variety of people, most notably Rush Limbaugh and Deborah Heaton, seem to be confused over whether the price of contraception goes up the more often a woman has sex. My theory vis-a-vis Rush is that he, a known Viagra user, is confused by the fact that he himself needs to take more pricy pills the more often he can manage to find a sexual partner. That's not how it works for women, honey. The price is the same, whether the woman has sex even once.

 And unlike Viagra, the pill is medically needed for a variety of painful, non-sexual conditions, such as endometriosis, hypermenorrhea, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. I shudder for my daughters and everyone's daughters. How frigging pathetic and immature we are as a country right now, when we can ignore true crises (climate change, the horrendous violence in Syria, etc..) and instead shame women for responsibly taking contraception as directed by their doctors.

from Barcelona, my gift to you

Towards the end of our stay in Barcelona, we discovered a bar named D-luz near our hotel, which specializes in "gintonics", which is what Catalonians call "gin and tonics."  These gintonics were very creative, using only gin and tonic water for fluids but adding a bizarre-to-the-American-eye assortment of solid ingredients selected to complement each of a large number of gins.

Over the course of a couple visits, between the two of us the Sober Husband and I got through every gintonic on the menu, a feat which the inordinately handsome metrosexual bartender congratulated us upon enthusiastically.  My favorite of these gintonics was the one that seemed the strangest to me, and here is how it was made for me:

Take a large, sturdy stemmed glass (like the one in the picture above).  Slice up some fresh strawberries and strew many of the slices in the glass.  To the extend you can pound them without breaking the glass, do so with whatever pounding implement you have on hand.  Add a lot of ice to the glass.  Pour in a shot of Tann's (a Spanish gin I had never heard of before).  Next, gently insert a grooved pouring-stick into the glass (I dont even own such a thing, but am determined to acquire one).  Pour Schweppes tonic over this stick, so that not a single bubble forms due to some physics concept which the Sober Husband immediately grasped.  Fill glass to top.  Give it a little stir with the grooved pouring-stick.  Take a generous pinch of chocolate sprinkles, the ordinary kind which you might put on a child's ice cream cone, and add to the glass.  Que aproveche!

the artisanal cocktails and costumed children of Cataluña

Last night we stopped by a bar around the corner from our hotel, a bar specializing in "gintonics", which is what Barcelonans call that alluring mixture of gin with tonic water.  However.... this bar had shelves and shelves of gins, and the owner had created a special "gintonic" around each gin.  The only fluids involved were gin and Schweppes brand tonic water, so technically these were gin and tonics.... but.... I HAD A GIN AND TONIC WITH MUDDLED FRESH STRAWBERRIES AND WITH LITTLE CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES IN IT, like you'd put on an ice cream cone.  AND I LIKED IT.  There were gintonics with pomelo, with nutmeg, with little sticks of licorice...  The Sober Husband had one with fresh apple slices.

A big TV screen behind the bar played the local version of old-MTV-when-it-played-music-videos, but without the sound while instead American pop music blared.  This was disconcerting.  A crazed gin genius spent a very large amount of time making our cocktails, and his assistant spoiled us with countless dishes of amazing olives and nuts.

All I know is that when I am back home, I am buying some chocolate sprinkles from the ice cream section, and I am putting them in my cocktails, and no one will stop me.

Today we took a road trip to a seaside town an hour away, to see some remarkable Roman ruins and a cathedral which features ancient Catholic art portraying rats staging a funeral for a cat, who comes back to life.  Heartbreakingly the cathedral closed just as we showed up, at only 2:00, and we were despondent and walked about sadly with our heads down.  "Tancat, why'd it have to be tancat?" we complained, having just learned the Catalan word for "closed" that day [a big part of the Roman ruins were also "tancat"].  Then we came upon a parade.  It was a very big parade, composed exclusively of very small children and people who were presumably their parents and teachers.  The parade had a large section of children dressed as "construction workers of tomorrow", lots of mice, a lot of little wolves accompanied by Red Riding Hoods, and then, most fascinating to me, the parade ended with a group of very little children dressed in the local street cleaning uniforms.  We were enchanted, and our hearts, so disappointed by the tancat-ness of the cathedral, lifted.  "It reminds me of how when I was studying Russian, we learned how to say, 'ever since I was a small child, I dreamed of being a collective farm worker'," I said.

todavia en Barcelona

 Bonding with the pigeons of Barcelona.

 Contemplating the majesty of the gothic cathedral of Barcelona.

Back to the pigeons!  They loved me, and I loved them.

En Barcelona: day II

Most of our day today was lost to jet lag.  We didn't leave the hotel until after 3:30 p.m.  We had a parental-guilt inspired lengthy reunion with Iris uber Alles over video (little Lola being too busy baking brownies with her grandmother to come to the computer).

Today I took Anton for a surprise walk, telling him nothing and making him follow me, when we ended up at La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's big unfinished cathedral. He freaked out in ecstasy at the crazy architecture inside. It was a big success on my part in planning a surprise outing. I spent over 135 euro on a scarf (but a really amazing scarf, a crazy beautiful black and gray scarf) and a more realistic 5 euro on a pair of gloves. IT IS REALLY FREAKING FREEZING HERE, SO MUCH COLDER THAN THE GUIDEBOOK SAID IT WOULD BE. I AM SO COLD. Tomorrow I plan to buy a winter coat and take a walking tour of the Modernisme architecture.

We saw thee of Gaudi's most famous buildings today (inside of one, I bought the 135 E scarf, which is truly fabulous). Our own hotel, the Casa Fuster, is a masterpiece of Modernisme.

 In the evening, we took advantage of our fancy suite's two person bathtub with jets, which allowed us to warm up after our walk to La Sagrada Familia.   Afterwards, we slipped down to the hotel's bar, which is a mix of Dr. Seuss and Gaudi, where the drinks were extremely expensive but also very generously poured.  We longed for the children to be present, as any middle-aged parent would.

en Barcelona

It's 9:07 P.M. in San Francisco and 6:13 A.M. local time in Barcelona. I'm wide awake while the Sober Husband sleeps peacefully. I'm drinking weird not-available-in-US sodas from the minibar which cost me 5 euros apiece, and I will regret that when check-out time rolls around, but I can't resist, and chatting online with Iris. The internet allows near-constant parent-child communication, at least with one child. The other child is too busy playing board games with her grandmother to come to the computer to say hello to her absent mother.

We were exhausted when we got here last night, but we walked around for a long time and went to a restaurant/bar inhabited by Barcelona hipsters, all wearing gray sweaters & glasses with heavy frames. I have not seen another American yet apart from my own husband. We ate "natxos" (I will forever spell "nachos" that way) and the best olives and drank a lot of a local wine.

 My Castilian Spanish only goes so far here, as everything is in Catalan. Today my goal is to go find some of the Gaudi buildings and drink more Fanta Limon, my favorite soda from when I studied in Madrid as an undergrad.

I am feeling like a plutocrat in our hotel; the Sober Husband always wants to stay at 5 star hotels, and we got upgraded to a suite for no apparent reason. I think we could afford to take more vacations if we stayed at crappy hotels -- my ex and I used to stay at the worst places, including notably a hotel in Mexico with bedbugs and one in Paris with roaches and horrible stains everywhere which was so filthy that at one point I had a freakout -- but I have to admit that this suite is fucking fantastic. We have four small but luxurious rooms and a huge balcony which makes me want to get a megaphone and shout things at people going by. "This is where I will give my speeches," I said to the Sober Husband when we discovered our balcony. "Just like Franco," he said approvingly.

fusion

Lately we've been loving the food truck craze.  Our family's favorite food truck is Señor Sisig's, which provides Mexican food with a Filipino flavor.  We are all dying to try the Creme Brulee truck, which we have seen occasionally parked down at the gas station at Castro and 18th Street but only when we were all too well-fed to stop for creme brulee.  And then on a recent date night, the Sober Husband and I caught sight of Eire Trea, an Irish-Eritrean food truck, shut down at a parking lot.  We can only dream of what it has to offer...  I paced around its exterior impatiently, but there were no menus in sight.  Colcannon wrapped up in injeera bread?  I can only dream.

"children just want their parents to be happy"

I brought home a laminated street map of Barcelona, which I was very happy to find as soon the Sober Husband and I will be traveling there for our first child-free vacation since procreating nearly 13 years ago.  Little Lola spat at the map and said she was going to cut out the part which showed where our hotel was (so presumably we wouldn't be able to find our way to our reserved room).

Earlier in the day a child who shall remain unnamed picked a fight with me because I refused to go into detail about something I'd done.  "I don't have any secrets from your father, but I can from you," I noted.

The child's face settled into firm disapproval.  She spat out, "He thinks it's okay for you to do anything that makes you happy!"  Clearly I need a different authority to answer to, one less permissive than my spouse.  I should settle under the yoke of my child overlord.