the aquarium.

i just wanted to say this because I thought it was very odd:

The Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco now has chinchillas and hedgehogs.

what will humanity think of next?

-Iris

The animal songs

Today, I was bored. And I was staring at kittens, because they have dominated our house. And all of a sudden I started singing, because, as you know, human intelligence fails per proximity to a cat. Anyways, the song kept going on and on and eventually I decided it was very good and I would write it down:

Kittens Are Small
by Iris

You are kittens you are small
You know kittens are not tall
If you were tall you'd be 6 feet,
and that would not go with the beat.

You are kittens you are small
when you stand up you are tall
but only at the shopping mall,
which is not always fun for all.

Kittens, kittens, are so small,
I wish sometimes that you were all
a bit less short and more a quart.
Because, Because, Because,

You are kittens you are small!

Then I asked Momdude if she had a song for Pigwidgeon, our pet parrot who is supposed to be very smart, yet can not speak. It turns out Momdude did have a song. It went like this;

"You are a bird, you can't say a word, you poor dumb bird."

There was a silence. Then Momdude remarked that her song is the blues. Then I said, "My song is upbeat. Yours is the blues."

-Iris

Lola Answers Your Questions

Hughman asked, "1. Are you planning on learning to cook like your dear mother once you get the new stove?"

"No, not really. I don't really enjoy cooking, but I like baking cookies."

"2. are you looking forward to one day going to summer camp?"

"Soooort of, but, you know. Yeah."

"3. It sounds like you enjoy acting from your performances at school. would you want to be an actor when you're older? what actors do you like? "

"YES YES YES! [directs mother to type in capitals] I like Angelina Jolie! And Johnny Depp!"

NonymousGoatsePants asked, "If Mom-dude was a shape (Circle, triangle, square, duo-decahedron, etc.), which shape would she be and why? Same question for Dad."

"I think circle because I imagine a circle being nice. And Daddude would be a triangle because triangles look smartsy. I mean square. Yeah."

Christy asked, 1. If you had to eat the same thing every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?

"CANDY! But my second choice would be pizza."

"2.What is your favorite book?"

"I have a lot of favorite books, but a lot and a lot more of books I hate. My favorites are any Octonauts books, Clarice Bean books, yeah. I hate and I say hate, so many I can't remember. I really dislike.... Can you really write down what I'm saying?"

"I AM writing down what you're saying."

"But not like 'uh.'"

"Go back to the books!"

"Uhhhhhhhh..... (giggles) uhhh....... I really dislike, um, uh, I have a question."

"What is it?"

"Tough question!"

"What is your tough question?"

"NO! I was saying to the person, 'that was a tough question'!"

"Let's go on to the next one."

Carroll: "What do you like best about living in San Francisco?"

"Probably [long, thoughtful pause], I don't know. There are no chinchillas around here, you know. I mean, also, have you ever seen a chinchilla before? Not in San Francisco at least."

"But what do you like about it?"

"Well, I like the, uh, good building things?"

"Do you have anything else to add, Lola?"

"There's good cookies."

announcing Comment of the Week and Ask The Lola

For ages I've meant to introduce a "Comment of the Week" feature, since often there are some comments here which are pretty damn amusing (sadly the comments can outshine the content, but I'm not afraid to give credit where it is due). The first Comment of the Week goes to AnonymousGoatsePants, who started out here as a troll sniping at the other commenters and the poor old Drunken Housewife herself. Now he's the alpha troll!

And, upon much pressure, I need to bring back "Ask The Lola." Lola has deigned (insisted) on entertaining your questions once again. Please leave your questions here, and I'll pass them on to her. Why she wants to do this given that she doesn't read the blog, I don't know. Recently I asked her, in a moment of parental caring, whether I'd written anything which bothered her here, and she looked at me blankly. "I don't read it." Then, kindly, Lola reached over and patted my arm consolingly, murmuring, "I almost never check my own blog, either." She's in a helpful mood, though, so come on with your toughest questions!

fading quietly into the background, yer Drunken Housewife

dumb arguments I have had with the love of my life

There have been so many, oh so very many, abysmally stupid arguments I have fallen into with the man I consider the love of my life, the father of my children. Herewith, for your amusement, the two stupidest arguments we've had recently:

I. The Fishnets Argument: A ten year-old we know wore a micro-miniskirt and fishnet stockings to an event we attended. The Sober Husband and I argued over whether a micro-miniskirt (the shortness of this skirt cannot be exaggerated) and fishnets are sexy clothing.

Sample dialogue:

Sober Husband (snidely): Maybe it's just you with the dirty mind, who is reading into it.

Me (heatedly): I'd be happy to drive you down to the Tenderloin and show you a ton of whores wearing that same outfit on the job!

Sober Husband (loftily): What if I could tell you that dressing like that was the very best way of defying authority? Don't you want children to question authority?

Me (becoming incoherent): As a feminist, I'm really troubled by a prepubescent wearing sexualized clothing [raising my voice to drown out repeated accusation that it is only me, with my dirty mind, who sees a micro mini over fishnets as sexual] which is likely to put a little girl in situations she's not prepared to handle!

This argument droned on and on, with neither combatant willing to back down. I am still incredulous that an intelligent man, a man with a Ph.D for God's sakes, would argue so hard that fishnets and a crotchskimmer are fine, admirable clothing for a ten year-old, particularly since he's arguing with the woman who doles out the fellatio and the food, but there you have it. Outcome: Unsettled.

II. The Relative Intelligence of Parrots: An evergreen, this one never dies completely. Whose parrot is smarter: the Sober Husband's, the crabby twelve year-old Amazon parrot, or mine, the sweet, little one year-old African Grey? Sample dialogue:

Sober Husband (snidely): Your bird is dumb. Mine can talk.

Me (in a feisty manner): Yeah, well, my bird can find her way upstairs! Your bird can't go upstairs alone!

Iris uber Alles (siding with her mother): That's because his bird is too fat! It's too fat to get up the stairs!

Sidenote: As I was composing this piece, I asked the Sober Husband if he could give me some examples of stupid arguments we have, and he said, "How to load the dishwasher." I gave him a look. "That's not a stupid argument; you just won't do it right!" Readers, I submit to you: the man won't follow the simple directives that Tupperware always goes on the top rack, and the non-stick pans are hand-wash only. That's not an argument worth debating; it's someone who refuses to remember two simple rules and damages valuable dishes in his carelessness.

On the brighter side, during the one millionth and one iteration of the Your Parrot Is Dumber argument, the Sober Husband recently had a generous moment and allowed, "Maybe they're both dumb. Maybe my parrot is dumb, too." Outcome: a temporary tie.

the farewell

Yesterday ten year-old Iris uber Alles set off for sleepaway camp, for the first time. She has never been away from her family so long. Iris did go on a 3 day, two night field trip at the end of fourth grade, with no homesickness at all, but that time, she was with her entire class and all her teachers.

Iris didn't show any signs of reluctance until it was time to say goodbye to her father (who didn't drive down to San Jose to say goodbye, as he had work obligations). It was very hard for her to part from him for a week.

The camp itself is run by the Girl Scouts, and it's in a scenic, secluded spot half a mile from the road. The girls take a 3 hour bus ride from a gathering point in San Jose and then walk the last half mile. Their duffle bags and sleeping bags were shlepped in for them in a sherpa system, which offended the Sober Husband. "They should have to carry that stuff. Toughen them up."

"Iris can't carry that much for that long."

"There'd be even less of her left if she did," cackled the Sober Husband with odd enjoyment. "They'd all get whittled down."

I had trouble trying to find the bus stop. My computer-generated driving directions were useless. We got lost once, but I finally found some likely looking buses, although in a spot which was, based on the numbers, seven blocks from where it should be. "Wait here", I instructed the children, and I hopped out to investigate. The domineering mother of Iris's off-and-on friend who is attending the same camp charged over, "We finally found you!" I braced myself and turned back to the car. "Everyone out! This is it!"

The take-charge mother kept issuing instructions to me, instructions I didn't need. I did ask "where is the check-in desk?", but this prompted a flow of "That is where you take your health form, and you get your bus pass for Iris", which I found maddening. The other mother even somewhat spoiled a surprise I had for Iris, as I was being very secretive about some bulky envelopes I had managed to successfully hide for days, which I was clandestinely dropping off (mail delivery to this camp-in-the middle-of-nowhere is erratic and so the camp offers the feature that you can deliver all your letters ahead of time to be doled out to your beloved child), but the other mother's loud "You DID drop off your packages, right? Like I told you?" tipped Iris off that there were packages in her future.

Lola and I hugged Iris good-bye (Lola's hugs coming over Iris's protests), and we stood so we could wave to her repeatedly. We did a lot of waving, because the buses left fifteen minutes late, due to an epic case of reluctance. One little girl, who looked to be no more than eight, did not want to go to camp. Her mother had no empathy with her, refused to talk to her, did not get down on her daughter's level, but instead indulged in a physical battle with her (the mother keeping an icy smile in place, no doubt for the benefit of the onlookers). The little girl kept taking off her bus pass and daypack, refusing to submit to the yoke of the oppressor, and trying to make a break for it. The mother was physically dragging and fighting with the girl. At one point the mother tried to enlist a couple of counselors, I think hoping they would be like bouncers or asylum attendants and carry off the little girl, but clearly they weren't comfortable with that. They tried speaking to the little girl (which the mother wasn't doing), but they weren't about to grab her.

I was really close by, since Iris was in the back row of the first bus and this little girl's mother was trying to strong-arm her on to the second bus, and I felt sick watching this. I had told Iris that if she changed her mind, she could stay home. I couldn't imagine why it was so important for such a small child to go away from home for a week. Finally the mother managed to physically deposit the child on the bus steps, and then she actually ran away, without saying goodbye, just sprinting out of there. The little girls' feet protruded from the bus. The counselors spent some time talking to her, and eventually the little girl pulled her feet in and gave up. Then the buses were free to leave.

Lola and I walked alongside Iris's bus, waving and waving, until it was gone. We drove home. I felt terrible for that unknown little girl, who fought so hard not to go to sleepaway camp.

Lola vs. The Tiny Art Director

Yesterday we stopped at a bookstore, and I ran across a highly charming book, "The Tiny Art Director: A Toddler And Her Vision" by Bill Zeman. Zeman is a highly accomplished artist, and he has a very demanding little girl for whom he draws. She tells him she wants a picture of a crocodile or something, and he goes off and creates a fantastic painting and comes back, and she shouts at him something like "I hate it! You are so dumb!". Zeman has recorded all these interactions deadpan in his book, listing "The Commission", "The Critique", and the outcome, Accepted or Rejected in forms next to the beautiful, funky art in question. (I found last night that there is a blog about the Tiny Art Director, but the book is much better, as much of the charm is in the large, beautiful pictures and the mock-professional forms recording the Tiny Art Director's commissions and comments, as though these were real submissions to advertising agencies or magazines).

I showed this book to Iris and Lola, who roared and roared. "This is the funniest book I have ever seen!" said Iris. They particular loved one of the Tiny Art Director's critiques, where she said, "You are dumb! Why don't you grow up, Daddy?" The three of us thumbed through the book in perfect harmony, laughing and laughing.

What I liked about it was the bloodthirstiness of the Tiny Art Director (one drawing was rejected because it didn't show enough blood. "Can't you draw blood?"). I've come under some criticism for recording the darker side of Iris and Lola here on my blog. Sometimes Iris and Lola, sweet little pretty girls that they are, do things like pretending they are vampires drinking blood from goblets, toasting "to the death of a human! To the death of a human!" Also, much has been said over the years about Lola's desire to murder her older sister. This sort of thing has led to people asking me, with only helpfulness and good wishes, why I don't have these children in psychotherapy. Next to the Tiny Art Director, Lola and Iris are straight out of the Osmond clan (the Osmond clan of yore, before Marie struggled with post-partum depression and Donny attempted to go hard rock).

On the way home the children squabbled over who should get "The Tiny Art Director" book for her birthday. Then a more vicious fight broke out: who is funnier, Lola or the Tiny Art Director? This one led to tears, as Lola is accustomed to the title of Funniest Person Anyone In the Family Knows In Person, and Iris was strongly contending that the Tiny Art Director is infinitely funny. No moment of happiness lasts for long enough.

haphazard hospitality

Iris and Lola were enjoying Otter pops yesterday in Golden Gate Park, and like Proust's madeleine, Iris's Otter pop brought back memories.

"I remember," she reminisced happily, "how once Momdude was shouting because there was no food in the house, and she was having a dinner party and people were coming in like five minutes and she wanted a big dinner and there was NO FOOD in the house. So me and Daddude went to the store, and he said, 'We're just here for the fundamentals; we're just gonna get what Mommy needs for dinner. Oh, and Otter pops.'"

(I assure you all that whenever I have a dinner party, I plan the menu the day ahead, and I start cooking well ahead of time).

we are not special snowflakes

After the Sober Husband airily and maddeningly announced, in a complete turnaround, that we shouldn't order a new range but instead buy some secondhand piece of crap off Craigslist or eBay, a certain chill descended over the land. Few words were spoken. Couches were slept upon, in an oddly festive way (Lola, seeing her silent, crabby mother bed down on a couch, was thrilled and claimed the other couch, and it was a little living room slumber party).

Then the Sober Husband said contritely that he had looked on Craigslist and eBay and of course there were no 44 inch, dual-fuel, double oven ranges and that he was ready to just order one and be done with it. His cold, mean wife informed him that he should take his time, spend more time looking, but he demurred politely. He ordered an Aga Legacy, which must be shipped from Europe and will arrive in two months. (By then, we'll have been without a stove for going on five months).

In the end, the choice of the Aga was automatic. It was the winelist paradigm. If the stoves were alcoholic beverages, they'd appear on a menu something like this:

LaCanche - the grapes will be lovingly gathered when they have reached optimal ripeness, crushed, then bottled with a label of your personal design. Price upon request.

LaCornue Cornufe - French, magnificent, striking, it's like getting a really great Chateau Margaux. $$$$

Aga Legacy - Toss the winelist aside and order a manhattan, because that's what the Rat Pack drank, dammit. Retro sensibility paired with impressive function (you'll be drunk fast and look cool getting there). $$$

Heartland Paragon - the (formerly) Canadian option. It's the two buck Chuck of dual fuel, double oven ranges. $$

Virtually everyone (except our friend Bob S., a Scottish maverick) orders the next-to-the-cheapest wine off the list whenever they are dining out. When I reached legal drinking age, it didn't take me long to develop that strategy, and I was shamed when as a middle-aged person, I read somewhere that everyone does that all the time. It's so predictable that savvy restaurant owners always stick whatever they want to unload in that price point on the menu. Before we found the Heartland Paragon, we were agonizing over whether to get the Aga or the LaCornue, but once we found the cheapest alternative, the decision was clear in our predictable, typical brains. It was the Aga, the next-to-the-cheapest on the list.

When I was young and headstrong, I fancied myself special, unique, with my own inimitable way of looking at the world. As I aged, I came to realize how utterly predictable and ordinary I truly am. As Chuck Palahniuk has told us all, we are not special snowflakes, we are not unique and beautiful. We're walking meat.

the story of my life: jerked around by the moody genius

Most people who know us regard me as a hot-blooded, temperamental woman, a veritable shrew, married to a calm, rational man full of brains and equanimity. Oh God, are they all so wrong, so very fucking wrong. If you were to live with us day in and day out, you would come to realize that the cranky, headstrong woman is consistent and reliable, given to strong opinions but living by them in a fairly predictable way, whereas our calm, capable genius is a drama king whose moods and opinions change erratically from moment to moment.

After a decadent night of consuming over $400 worth of sake and sushi on a blind bro-date with a fellow geek, the Sober Husband felt generous towards me. For over a day, he said with kindness and largesse, "You should order whatever stove you want. Get the one of your dreams. You deserve it."

But then, after I decided to take him up on this and not even order the more expensive of my choices but instead get the significantly cheaper range with less powerful burners, he turned on me. He had a bad day at work, leading to some testy email exchanges in the evening, and he was not in a generous or happy frame of mind. The man actually informed me that I should buy something off Craigslist or eBay. I felt like pulling handfuls of my hair out. I reminded him of our very odd space and how only a few European manufacturers made ranges to fit that size and how thoroughly I had googled those ranges. "But there must be someone somewhere who bought one of those stoves and didn't keep it," he said airily.

This is so like him. He's not consistent; he won't stick to a decision. It can be maddening. It reminds me of when we were discussing marriage, and it was clear we were about to become engaged and married, but then he went to visit his Drunken Housewife-loathing mother, who yammered at him day and night about how he shouldn't marry a divorcee (despite the fact that her own husband had been divorced TWICE before she met him), asking him over and over again, "So why do you want to get married?" and barely listening to the response before she let out an "I don't think THAT is a reason to get married." And then there was the time he drove me into a deep hole of depression over financial worries sparked by an impending property tax deadline, only to have him look at me like I was an idiot a week or so later, when I said something pessimistic about money, and say blithely that he'd just written a check for the property tax, we had plenty of money, what was I talking about, silly Drunken Housewife.

In this state, with our lofty genius preoccupied with work matters and our Drunken Housewife seething over her almost-ordered-but-snatched-out-from-under-her range, we had our Big Fat Important Meeting with an orthodontist to review a proposal for putting braces on Iris. I was under the impression that, after research and a second opinion, we were prepared to get braces for Iris, but the Sober Husband was not. "Can you explain to me again the point of this?" he asked the patient orthodontist. "Why are we doing this? It's not aesthetic, is it?"

He's going to drive me to an early, stove-less grave with this will-o-the-wisp behavior.

coitus interruptus of the gas stove

It's been over a month since my wretched Magic Chef died. Everyone, including me, is so ready for me to stop researching gas stoves, stop nonstop yammering about them, and just frigging buy one for the love of God. Ten year-old Iris uber Alles laments pointedly, "It has been forever since I've had cookies! I need cookies!" Seven year-old Lola bitches, "Just buy the French one! It's obvious!"

Yesterday I drove to the East Bay to see a gourmet appliance outlet which specializes in floor models and expensive appliances which have been slightly damaged and refurbished. There I didn't find anything that worked for me and the limited space in my kitchen, but I did get quoted a price on the Aga Legacy which was $1,600 less than the San Francisco distributor had given me. I asked the salesman to double check that. He went off and made a phone call and came back, assuring me that was the price.

Gloating I drove home, feeling like a victorious bargain hunter. The time was right to buy: the Sober Husband had been complaining for a while, "I don't understand how you cooked all these years on a 30 inch stove and now you need a 44 inch one" and "How can it cost so much when we bought a $200 oven before?" Then on Sunday night he went out on a blind bromance date, set up by a mutual acquaintance, with the chief scientist of one of the internet's most famous companies. The two geeks hit it off so well on this blind bro-date that they closed out a sushi restaurant and consumed $400 worth of sushi and sake, the Sober Husband wandering home after midnight on a work night mumbling, "You know, he's a real regular there at this place, so at closing, after everyone else left, we got this special sake where they had polished all the grains of rice before making it. We'd had two bottles of sake before, but even so, I could tell it was special." After this massive indulgence, somehow the Sober Husband felt generous, and the next morning he said, "You should get the oven you want. The best one."

Thrilled with both this cooperative attitude and the great price on the Aga, I decided to buy. While I was cooking my (in)famous "pasta in the style of the glutton", with slow-cooked carrots on the side, the Sober Husband called the salesman I'd met the day before and told him we wanted the Aga, after telling me again I could get the more expensive French range if I wanted. I felt happy and calm as I sipped my champagne and sauted my potatoes, garlic, and chives. Then the salesman called back. He'd made a $1,600 mistake. He couldn't sell the Aga for any less than the San Francisco distributor could.

"This puts us back at square zero," I fretted. We ate dinner, nothing settled.

the solar system game/reenactment

In Momdude's earlier post, she mentioned the Solar system reenactment game. However, she did not describe it thoroughly enough, which is not okay,--and I am sure that Lucy would agree with me-- because it was hilarious and she herself laughed out loud at it. Here is how it works:

One person (either me or Lucy) is the sun. They stand still and flail their arms in a peaceful fashion (representing the sun's rays. The other person is a planet (any planet, but the game does depend on which planet is chosen.). Then the planet spins around and "orbits" the sun, pretending to be that planet. It ends up being hilarious.

-Iris

P.S. I am working on a video of the reenactment on my computer, and it will appear here shortly.

middle school awards and the cynical middle-aged

One of my favorite commenters here teaches middle school on the East Coast. At her school, the faculty give out a modest number of awards at the end of the school year, awards which are intended to reward students who really were outstanding. This year they were made to give an award to a severely handicapped student, and our heroine had mixed feelings.

Over at our school, I recently went to the end-of-year assembly for the upper school for the first time, and I was bemused to see that a number of awards are given out for greatness of human spirit, but not a one for academic excellence. Silly me, I had no idea we'd enrolled our children in an academy of the human spirit. If I'd been looking for one, I might have placed the children at an ashram instead.

while the Drunken Housewife is away

On Father's Day, we went off to "Sunday Streets", where major streets are closed to cars for five hours, to get some exercise and fresh air. We took a break from following speeding Lola, who darted through the crowds of bicyclists on her little Razor scooter, "Scooty", for some sustenance. At lunch, I urged the children to think of reasons the Sober Husband is a great father.

One of Lola's reasons was "he lets me eat sugar paper." I didn't get it.

"When you were at class, Lola ate sugar paper!" Iris said.

"You were out at your art class," the Sober Husband began.

Lola interrupted. "I said I would eat anything, even paper, so Daddy got me sugar paper. We put a lot of sugar on top of a piece of paper, and I ate it! I proved I would eat a piece of paper!" She beamed proudly.

They all fondly remembered that moment. "So that's the kind of thing you get up to when my back is turned, eh?" I said.

a temporary area of expertise

Ever since my wretched Magic Chef gas range expired, I have been spending the vast majority of my time researching stoves. Yesterday we drove down an hour down the peninsula, over the children's vociferous protests, to go to a large appliance store, because online I read that this store had the 44" Aga and La Cornue. It turned out that they did not have the promised ranges, but instead had a mislabeled larger, much more expensive La Cornue and the smaller La Cornues and Agas.

Rather than waste the trip, I pulled the Sober Husband over to the huge La Cornue and told him to investigate it thoroughly. "Poke around in it. Look under the burners. Pull on the doors. Do whatever you need to do." I signed up on the waiting sheet for a salesperson (evidently this particular store is the place to go for stoves in the South Bay; it was hopping with stove shoppers). The bored children invented a game where they acted out the solar system.

Finally I got a superior acting salesman. I briefed him on my way over to the Sober Husband, who was removing and examining whatever could be removed from the La Cornue floor model. "We're looking for a double oven, five or six burner gas or dual fuel range. We don't need a large oven because I'm a vegetarian and I don't cook turkeys. I've narrowed it down to the La Cornue Cornufe or the Aga Legacy, and what I want from you is to tell us if there is something I'm missing, something cheaper." He rolled his eyes at me and said, "I think you will find there is a lot out there. And the Cornufe doesn't have a double oven; it only has a single oven."

I picked up the La Cornue literature in front of me (well-thumbed copies of which I had already at home) and showed him the Cornufe 110's double ovens. "And it has to be under 45 inches, which rules out all the Wolf and Vikings," I said.

The man visibly crumpled under the weight of my superior knowledge. "I didn't know the Cornufe had two ovens. In all my years I've only sold the single oven La Cornue." He went off to consult with the most knowledgeable staff member and returned to say that no, they didn't think there was anything I was missing. The only other options wouldn't be good enough; they would just have one huge oven for turkeys-on-steroids and a little warming drawer oven.

After some quality time with the La Cornue, we walked around all the other ranges, all of which were completely unsuitable. Then the Sober Husband pointed to a stainless steel range. "What's wrong with that one?" I looked at it. It was a Heartland Paragon which looked a lot like the Aga Legacy. "I didn't know this existed. I know Aga bought Heartland." We looked at it very closely. It was obviously the Aga Legacy's cheaper cousin. It was thousands of dollars less, but it had the same double oven and five burners. "It's just flimsier," said the Sober Husband. "Feel the doors." I pointed out that the burners weren't copper.

"So why didn't the guy tell us about this? This is exactly what we're here for," he kvetched.

"It's gotta be from that same factory," I said (I'd learned earlier in my research that my two favorite ranges, one British and one French, are actually made at the very same factory). "After Aga bought Heartland from GE, they must have started this one up at a lower price point, under a different label." We stared at the cheaper, shinier stove. "I guess I just want anything from that factory. It's all about the factory."

At home, I learned that the Heartland Paragon range is only made in stainless steel and that no one distributes it in San Francisco. The Sober Husband, thoroughly sick of the subject, elusively slipped out of the room over and over again as I researched the Heartland and attempted to plan a trip to Oakland to a distributor. "Just buy the French one!" Lola shouted. "It's obvious! Don't make me go anywhere! Just buy the French one! In magenta!"

"Did you notice how I knew more about stoves than the salesman did?" I bragged. The beleaguered Sober Husband succeeded finally in leaving the room, abandoning me to my monomania.

remembrance of psychos past

Not long ago we invited some of our neighbors over for a barbecue. After we'd had several rounds of drinks and plenty of food, somehow the conversation turned to the the new ultra-modern house on the block, its owner, and the highly annoying contractor who built it last year. The man who bought this highly priced, glass modern monstrosity is a bit of an enigma in the neighborhood. I've exchanged waves with him but that's been it. The Sober Husband claims to have spoken to him once, but no one else seems to have managed to meet him.

"He's straight", my next-door neighbor (who like virtually everyone on this block is himself gay)said, for no apparent reason, about the new neighbor.

"No way!" I said. "That is such a gay house. I can't believe that guy is straight."

"He is!" insisted my neighbor. "I think he even had a girlfriend at one point. And he has cats."

Soon we ran out of material on this new neighbor, whose name no one could remember, and we went on to reminisce about the contractor who built that house. (My conflicts with that hot-tempered builder were well-chronicled here). "I thought he was going to attack me," I said. "He tried to sabotage my car, the little psycho, and my husband didn't believe me."

"I believe you," said my across-the-street neighbor, who'd had some unpleasant run-ins with the contractor. "I believe you."

But both my next door neighbor and my across-the-street neighbor took issue with my description of the contractor as "a little psycho."

"He was short!" I insisted.

"He was six feet tall," argued my next-door neighbor.

"No way!" I tried to muster up some drunken evidence to back my contention that the horrible man in question was diminutive. "All the time it was going on, I wrote about him on my blog, and I wrote he was short."

"I'm five ten, and he was taller than me. He was at least six feet," my neighbor said firmly. My across-the-street neighbor concurred.

"I really thought he was short. He didn't seem any taller than me, and I'm five six and a half."

Aga Legacy and La Cornu Cornufe

If you have any information to report regarding either the Aga Legacy or the La Cornu Cornufe range, please, speak now before yer old Drunken Housewife spends far more money than she has on one of them.

yet another odd thing I found myself saying

"I don't care if Lucy 'indirectly called you a pair of shoes!'"

tattling

"Mommy! Lola just did that thing that bothers you!" Iris said insistently.

"But if I didn't see it, it didn't bother me," I argued. Iris was unaffected by this reasoning.

"But Mommy, she did that thing that bothers you," she said with her chin stuck out stubbornly.

fancy stoves and crappy stoves

I have always hated the stove in my house, for the full seven and a half years I've lived here. Why do I hate that wretched range from hell? Well, to begin with, the door doesn't seat well on the actual stove, which is irritating and probably why the front of the oven is significantly cooler than the back. This means whenever I'm baking anything, I need to rotate it, or it will burn on one side and not be done on the other. And the covers for the burners are ill-fitting, and they often slide around or out when I'm using the burners. This has caused me to burn my hands on many, many occasions, a problem I've never had with any other stove I've ever used.

The crappy metal burner covers aren't the only problem with the burners. It is not possible to keep them ignited at very low levels, so I can't simmer a sauce on low. They won't go very high, either. You can't do a stir-fry on that stove.

The broiler is ridiculously shallow as well, rendering it useless. The actual oven doesn't heat up enough to broil, sigh. Additionally, the thermometer broke years ago, so there is no way of knowing how hot the oven actually is. You have to guess whether it's fully preheated or not.

In short, it's a piece of crap, a profoundly frustrating thing, but I've lived with it rather than replace it out of thrift. Then the oven part failed a couple of weeks ago, right as I was in the act of cooking dinner. The Sober Husband thought at first he could repair it himself, by replacing the thermostat, but that proved not to be the case. After he spent a lot of time and bought some parts, he gave up, and I declared that rather than pay to repair this hellhound of an appliance, I'd rather get another one. Since then we've been limited to using the burners only, which has required some creativity on my part when I held dinner parties with no oven.

I only once bought a stove. At my old house, I lived for a couple of years with a wretched all-electric stove I hated (again from thrift), but when I was fixing up the house to sell, I got a cheap gas stove from Sears. Oh, how I loved that $200 stove. It was infinitely better than the electric stove preceding it (and infinitely better than the crappy Magic Chef I unwillingly cohabit with now). I so much regretted not having swapped stoves years earlier. You'd think I'd have learned from that experience, but evidently the call of thrift is strong. I am from New England, after all.

So now the question we must confront is: do we seize the moment and get a double oven gas stove? Or do we act with financial responsibility and get another $200 Sears stove?

I'm a passionate cook. When I have a dinner party, it's difficult for me to get everything done with only four burners and one oven. If I had a double oven, I would actually use both ovens simultaneously from time to time... unlike everyone I know who actually owns a six burner, double oven range but who doesn't cook.

So I have a new hobby these days: learning about stoves. I will sum my new-found knowledge up for you: there are a wide variety of high end ranges which cost about $8,000 each, and I loathe each and every one of those which I have seen. Evidently the typical range-buyer has one and only one thing on her mind: how is she going to cram a massive, steroidal turkey into her oven and what can she do to get this giant corpse cooked faster. I, on the other hand, am a vegetarian. I do not cook turkeys, crown ribs, or big roasts. I do not need a large oven or a convection oven (which blows air about and is meant to cook meat through faster while keeping it bloody). I cook shorter, denser things like gratins and cakes, which are not going to cook as well in a convection oven.

A high end range sold to Americans is typically 48 inches wide, in large part because it has a big grill on the top. As best as I can determine, the only reason you would need a grill that size is for making two or more pounds of bacon at once. Again, I am a vegetarian. I do not need a huge griddle to strew bacon all over.

Reading websites and stumbling through showrooms, I felt despair. I sincerely hated every Viking, Wolf, or Thermador I saw. I was ready to give up and declare that my tastes in stoves, like so many other things, were hopelessly out of the norm and unsatisfiable. Then I met the Europeans, the Agas and the La Cornues. Both Aga and La Cornue have what seems to me to be just the right sized ranges: both 36 inch and 44 inch ranges. The Aga Legacy does have a terribly shallow broiler which would not be much of an improvement over the deceased stove's broiler, but its side oven can be set to have only heat radiating from the top, which would work well for me. The La Cornue has the best burners I've seen, triple rings of fire in brass settings, a powerful virtue, but its website proclaims "This young *La Cornue* line, born under an especially lucky star, is both valiant and impatient to prove its ability to serve you magnificently and faithfully over a long period of time", which does not inspire my confidence.

Reading reviews, I learned that the Aga 6:4 series sparks a lot of complaints, primarily from British people, but the Legacy, the one I like so much, is well-regarded. The one problem Americans seem to have is not being able to cram in their oversized turkeys. "Tell me how you make an 22 pound turkey in this," one woman lamented. "Please tell me." Aga Legacy, you are now my dream stove.