30 Years! Or is it 23?

Mensa Boy and I had our 30th anniversary on the 29th. This
year the answer to my question: "How long does it seem like it's been?" was "More like 23." he said it's because we have son who is 22 and he can't hardly remember what it was like not to have kids!
My friend Cassie and I made 100 cupcakes on Saturday and MB and I
handed them out I everyone as they left church on Sunday.

Uh Oh. Change.

I haven't posted here in months. Like...6 months? And today I decided to write about how I guess I'm not a runner.
So I went to my blog and lo! I'm no longer signed in! No problem. Hit the "Sign In" button. And here we are are! Blogger has a whole new look! And I am totally lost.
This immediately reminds me of that old nightmare people have where they go to college and their parents  move without telling them. My parents moved when I went to college. But they told me. They came and picked me up from college to help with the move.
So we pull up in front of this little house in Farmington and I walk in.

"Where's my room?" I ask.
"Uh...ha! No room for you. Dad's gonna build one in the basement. We thought you could sleep on the porch for a bit."
"No really? We live in Minnesota. It gets like, 1,000 degrees below zero in January. Might be a bit chilly out there."
"No silly! We'll have it done then."
And they did. I slept on the porch for the first summer I was home and it was lovely. Except for when it stormed. Then Mom would come bombing in there in the middle of the night, slamming all the combination windows shut.
I'll write about the not running later.

This is What I Have to Say

"Bob, I absolutely refuse to buy you socks for your birthday. You will simply have to come up with other ideas. If you need socks, get them yourself. They are not a luxury item."

"Taylor. It's time. Take off the grey hoodie and put this long-sleeved henley on. You are not 7 years old anymore."

And so that's what I said after my errands this morning. 

Bob's birthday is pretty much always a problem. Years ago, when he needed tools, or had something he enjoyed that needed equipment, like cross-country skiing, I would gather money from the family and splurge on something really really great that, more often than not, was able to double as a Christmas gift. Skil saws, skis, a weight bench...that kind of thing. Now what he does is publish a list that is supposed to work for both events. And inevitably that list has 5 items on it that cost between 5 and 10 dollars each. Well? No MORE! Thank goodness I didn't draw his name for Christmas! I don't know who did, but it's THEIR problem now! 

This is the first year we've drawn. The 5 of us did, $100 limit, I got Taylor. Who wants a 20" monitor for his computer...worth more than $100 but I owe him $40 for last week's Christmas bush purchase. Yes. Bush. It's not a tree. Oh sure, when it's out there on the tree farm, growing out of the ground, shaped gloriously like a Christmas tree, it looks like a Christmas tree. But once you hack off enough lower branches, and you see that it has more than one main trunk growing out of the ground? You end up saying to yourself, "darn, but if this thing isn't really a BUSH!"

Where was I?

Taylor. He wears grey hoodies all winter. Actually, fall, winter and spring. T-shirt underneath. Not a sweatshirt. Not a zip-up hoodie. Just a pull-over hoodie. Grey. He has two shades of grey. And he doesn't wash them often enough for my taste. So I am dragging him kicking and screaming into adulthood and I am buying him other warm, long-sleeved options. He didn't fuss! But then, he's not much of a fusser. I just told him he's too old to dress the same every single day. When people don't know who they are? They describe him thus: "You know...that tall brown-haired kid with the grey hoodie?"

Yup. 

So foot has been put down. 

Yup. I Remember. But Some of it I Don't.

I remember sitting at my desk in my home office. I was working for The Cleveland Company, looking out over the back deck, listening to NPR, when I got a message from my brother-in-law.

 "Are you watching this?"
"Listening on the radio," I said. "I imagine St. Paul is a mess right now."
"Not the World Trade Center in St. Paul," he said. "The one in New York!"

Not a little Cessna. Four large, passenger-bearing planes. Boeing 757s and 767s.

I hadn't been listening closely. It was a beautiful day in my neighborhood in Minneapolis. The air was pleasant, the leaves were turning, I was thinking about walking to the precinct to vote.

This past Friday Taylor said they talked in their classes about where they were when the Twin Towers were hit. These kids are all 16. They were babies then. Kindergarten...first grade. He said he didn't have a memory of that day.

"You guys didn't tell me," he said. "Why? I didn't hear about it for a couple of years."

I had no reason. No recollection of deciding to tell or not to tell. Nate would have been 11. Did we talk about it with him? I don't remember that either. I said, "Surely you had to have known something was going on. We probably had the news on all day." He didn't remember. I don't either. All I could say to him was that I didn't remember. That we may have made a conscious decision to shelter him from it. We may have intentionally kept it down low as topic of conversation. We've never really been into hiding dark things from the kids, but we might have. I just don't remember.

I remember the moments I saw it on television after Jeff told me. I remember walking to the precinct to vote and it was so quiet. Everyone at the polling place was quiet...murmuring to each other. Quietly handling bad news like all Scandinavians do.

The quiet is probably a bigger memory for me of that day and several days that followed. We lived under the flight line of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Planes had all been grounded. So there was an eerie silence for all those days.

It was also my sister Julia's 40th birthday. My brother-in-law had planned a wonderful meal out at a nice restaurant in St. Paul. He'd made reservations for our entire family. He was in Seattle and should have flown back in time for the meal. But he was stuck there. "You have to go ahead anyway," he told us. "It's her birthday."

And so we went to this restaurant, which was very empty, and we ate a fantastic meal and we talked about the day and we wished Julia a happy 40th and commiserated with her that her birthday would probably forever be marred by this national event.

I suppose everyone born on December 7 before 1941 felt that way too.

Suck it Uuuuup!

The kids (and adults) at school have been very very tired these past several days. Ever since we "fell back" they are dropping heads onto their desks in every classroom. I myself had a couple of mornings where I allowed myself another hour of sleep. But I also had one morning where I got up on time and dozed off during a long hold in my yoga practice, and then caught myself snoring during meditation!

"Suck it up" seems to be the most-often-used phrase these days. Our nurse told me she has sleepy kids coming to the clinic saying they "don't feel good and just want to lay down." After a drawn-out argument where she tried to explain that we don't have naptime in school, she finally told the last kid to suck it up.

As she related this to me in the staff workroom that day, another teacher who was standing at the copy machine turned around and said she used the same phrase earlier in the day. "I told the student 'we're all tired,'" she related to us. "Then I said we pretty much all have to just suck it up."

I haven't been tired during the day, thank goodness. Fewer things are more miserable than being that sleepy at your desk. But I sure will be glad when the light comes on outside a little earlier.

Aloo Gobi & Naan

Sounds a little like a song, doesn't it?

So I made this Aloo Gobi, which is an Indian dish consisting of cauliflower and potatoes. You cook them with onions in a skillet for a while and then add this amazing sauce you've pureed out of tomato, garam masala, turmeric, cumin and chili powder. The garnish should be cilantro but I didn't have any. Also the recipe called for lemon juice. None of those around, but this lime was happy to fill in and add color to this photo.

Taylor and I had this with naan and I have to say this was my best batch yet! Each time I make it, I refine my technique just a little bit  more. Tonight's addition was brushing it with the milk solids I had saved from my super-clear batch of ghee from Sunday. Sprinkled on a little kosher salt and we were good to go!

So now I'm overstuffed with bread. Ugh. But a nice meal. It didn't take long to put together, either. I found this recipe on About.com. Here, try it.

On a side note, and completely unrelated, I accidentally called my poor mother this morning. At 6:30 their time. OOOPS! SORRY MOM! Each morning I call Taylor at 7:30 to make sure he's gotten himself awake. Since iphone STUPIDLY DON'T HAVE AUTODIAL, I use "recent calls" to call him each day. Unfortunately, I guess my finger slipped and I hit Mom & Dad's number instead.

But look at the bright side...at least I had been a dutiful daughter yesterday and CALLED my mother. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been in "recents!"

Scam Cookies

Surely I've told you Mensa Boy's theory about oatmeal cookies. I have, haven't I? Well, to recap, he says that oatmeal cookies are "scam cookies" because they look like chocolate chip from a distance.

MB is a man of simple tastes. Ice cream should be vanilla and cookies should be chocolate chip. That's it. Oh. Pies should be apple. 

Here is a conversation I had with him via email today:

ME: I ate a scam cookie this morning. 

It was actually good. 
I suspect the icing on it helped.

HE: I’m glad you were able to get through it. Most people don’t survive the shock.

(photo stolen from http://www.joyofbaking.com. (thanks folks!))

Somewhat Wordless, Unlike Someone Else!

I haven't written much, and I blame it on Facebook. It's easy enough to write a 140 character observation about something. Harder to write a missive for a blog.

That said, I observed something today on our school fax machine that gave me pause. You know those stupid scamming emails about the dude from Nigeria that wants to send you a bucket of money because he has no other place to put it? He'll give you some percentage of it if you pay him to ship it to you? Something like that?

Today on our fax machine was a newer version of that scam. One I consider to be a new kind of low in the area of scamming. This one was a letter from "Robert Barnes," a US Marine serving in Afghanistan. It uses a whole bunch of jarhead jargon to tell you that things are really bad there but they found this stash of abandoned cash. Here's the kicker paragraph that sort of got me hot:

"I don't want you to judge me by what you just read. I am a Devil Dog with a lot pride and honour. No amount of money can make up for the pain and sacrifice we all got through here in the hell hole in service for our country. But I have to also secure my future and have something to bank on after my active service."


ugh.

28 Years? or 20 Years and 11 Months?

Happy Anniversary, Mensa Boy! 28 years ago we got married at 11 o'clock in the morning. It was about this time that one of our groomsmen said that he thought WE were picking up his tux! What a fun day we had.

Every year I ask MB this question "So. It's been 'x' years. How many years does it feel like?" And he always answers the question with a number that is smaller than the actual (some could say he's sucking up!). This morning his answer was "A little less than 21 years."

It seems like that to me, too.

And now we are off for a quick trip to the beach. I can hear him filling the cooler with ice, and he's done most of our packing. Neither of us, when we moved into that roach-infested apartment in Eagan, Minnesota, ever would have dreamed that we would someday be living in sunny South Carolina, heading to the beach for our anniversary.

Love you, Bob.

It's a Vision Thing NOT!

"Thing is," I told Mensa Boy, "I can see just fine."

"'parently not," he said. And then went on to point out that I can just get the eyes enhanced fairly inexpensively with the Ophthalmologist that did the Lasik and then just move on.

"Thing is, I can see just fine." I repeated.

And that's what the optometrist said too. "I don't know...your eyes are 20/20," he said. Could be a problem with the machine, a problem with the operator. No ideas.

Back to the DMV. My 6-minute wait of last Friday was just a pipe dream today. I waited almost an hour before it was my turn.

But now I have a license again. I can be identified. I. Am BONAFIDE!

Just Call Him "Animal"

Riley stopped, panting, in the doorway of my room.

"Bob is an animal!" he said.

And then he proceeded to tell me about their cross-country run after work today. "I had to stop a couple of times," he said.

I told him about following Bob up Crowder's Mountain last fall. "I suggested once that he maybe just PRETEND he was breathing hard."

We are now eating sweet potato pancakes (The New Moosewood Cookbook," of course). And bacon. They are eating bacon. I tasted a bit the size of my fingernail. Nah. Not really appealing. They are testing various toppings for the pancakes. Like a science experiment. "I'm thinking butter and sugar," one says. "I don't know, I think the maple syrup is the best," another says. "Why not creole seasoning?" (this from Taylor, of course.)

Whatever. As long as they are happy. And they get to stand up while eating around the counter. Why do guys like to eat standing up?

King of Sharpies

He: "The paint is coming off my glasses and the place doesn't think they can do anything about it."

Me: "Isn't there a warranty?"

He: "Apparently not."

Me: "Well, you're the king of Sharpies. What's holding you back?"

He: "I already tried that on Taylor's and it didn't work."

I Have No Idea How to Title This

Today's recap:

We left for Mensa Boy's knee surgery (torn medial meniscus) at about 8:15, dropping Taylor at school. As we pulled out of driveway, we stopped and said goodbye to Nate, who was packing for his move back to Erskine.

The surgery went well. I think MB had more fun than I did. The surgery center waiting room was a bit of a zoo this morning...have I mentioned how much I had places like that? And wondered aloud why everywhere we go there must be TV showing tabloid journalism? It was a bit like a bus stop in there and I still feel a little of that bus-stop style grime on my person.

While there, I fielded phone calls from Nate about his room situation at Erskine. Somehow, they neglected to give him and his roommate a room. Huh. The guys had emails from Erskine this summer with their room assignments. They had both paid fees. It was not pretty. Nate vacillated between wanting to explode and sinking into despair. He gutted out the day, living out of his car and talking to me on the phone and texting Erin. Finally around 2 they got a room in the freshman dorm with a promise to be on the waiting list for an upperclassmen one.

MB's surgery went well. Before they took him in they gave him the happy juice in the IV and I commented that his eyes were starting to roll around in opposite directions. "must....save...world..." he muttered. After the surgery was over the nurse said "He was good. Happy. Smiled a lot." I told her he's that way all the time.

On the way home with a prescription for Demerol, we decided to have it filled at our Harris Teeter. I would pick up a sandwich and MB looked forward to going into the store because he always wanted to ride in the little carts. But HT's pharmacy said it's against SC law for them to fill scrips signed by a physician's assistant. YIKES! By this time I was just tired and hungry and anxious to get the scrip before MB's pain set in. So I dropped him at home, and drove back up into NC to get that filled. Have I mentioned how much I dislike CVS pharmacy? They are a study in slowwwww. I did get a good meal though, finally. I ate at the Amazing Wok while I waited the 40 minutes to get the Demerol.

So now we are all home. I have some chicken stock cooking from bones from Sunday and we'll have a light soup supper and settle in with the tube.

Sock Drawer Wars

It wasn't really a war. More like an insurgency, if you think about it.

Mensa Boy was out of town. Some of his very nice SmartWool socks were in the wash. When they came through the process, they "ended up" in my drawer. They are very nice socks. Very comfy especially when one is wearing a special shoe on one's BROKEN FOOT.

But. I was busted. Yesterday I lost my attention and opened my drawer while MB was standing nearby. He spotted the migrant socks right away.

"Uh, those socks. Can I have them back? Or do you need them for your foot?" he asked.

Sure. I could have played the BROKEN FOOT card. But I didn't. I would have felt too guilty.

Why I Still Think of Him as Sweetie Boy

Taylor has been quite sick this past 10 days. No complaining. Takes after his father. Just moping around coughing, not being a bother. He went to school the first day because he wouldn't dream of NOT.

At 1:30 he appeared in my office. Red in the face, low-grade fever, coughing, eyes glassy. Said he felt light-headed. I took him home. He was sad that he hadn't been able to stay to have his first class of building construction with Mark Bonda. Before we left I asked if he needed any books. He said he'd left them in his English class. So I went down there, knocked on the door, and asked about them. "They are right there, " she said, pointing to a seat.

"Would you get them for me?" I asked. "I don't want his classmates to know his mommy came to get his books."

And so she did.

After consulting with another mom in the building, I decided to take him to the doctor on Tuesday. It turns out he has sinusitis. So we went to Target and, while we waited for his prescription, we picked up the rest of his school supplies. One of the items he needed was an agenda.

As we were looking at all the agenda/planner choices (and there are a staggering number), we happened upon one that had school year dates, boxes big enough to write in, and yet the entire book would fit in his cargo pocket. "This is it!" he exclaimed. "We (the agenda and him) were meant for each other!"

He's so cute.

So on the way home I told him that I had made a point of not going into his classroom to get his books. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his classmates.

"You wouldn't embarrass me, Mom," he said. "Everyone knows who you are and they all think you are cool."

(((melt)))

"'Que Sera, Sera' a song that begins with Q"

JulieBeachJune09
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

That was the text message I received from my dear friend Julie this afternoon. And I laughed and laughed!

The first day we were at the beach, we were walking back to the beach house, talking about what games she wanted to play that evening. I am not a big gamer, board or otherwise, and I admit I was making fun just a LITTLE bit. As we walked along I suggested a game we could play without any hard rules, cards, boards or whatever. And moreover, the game could get more interesting as we got further down our bottle of wine.

"Let's come up with a song for every letter of the alphabet," I said. Julie loves to sing, is a fantastic singer, and had said she wanted to sing together during the week she was here. Well, I can't hold a candle to her vocalizations, so I was hoping this kind of thing would satisfy that urge of hers and also be a game I could deal with.

On we went, coming up with some pretty fantastical songs, although I did make fun of her for her inordinate number of hymns and spiritual songs (she is a preacher's wife, after all). And we got a little mired down at at times. But when we got to 'Q' we were totally stuck. And had no internet access either.

This bugged her. Julie does not give up. In fact, this is a photo I took of her on another quest she had while we were at the beach...her desperate need to find a shark's tooth.

We never did come up with a song for the letter 'X.' I have internet access now, but haven't availed myself of the opportunity to google it.

Que Sera Sera. Maybe we'll never come up with one for 'X.'

Is that Utthita Hasta Padangustasana or Utthita Parsvakonasana?

My yoga teacher told me in an email last night that the class we are going to is fun. It will make you sweat and work hard. The teacher is funny. Then she said:

"I realized - she also says all poses in sanskrit! so we will just do as the other students do..."

"I am familiar with Potato Gun safety," he said.

That was the end of the last conversation Mensa Boy had with the kids last night. All four of them (Nate, Taylor, Ryan and Erin) had disappeared around 8 o'clock. After asking me if they could "shoot my onions."

"No," I said. "I need my onions." I didn't even bother asking them to clarify.

We went to bed around 9:15 (yes, on a Saturday night) and shortly after that we started to hear sounds from the garage. Bear was also barking from his perch in Taylor's room.

Mensa Boy went down to investigate. He came back and said "At least there are no flames involved." Apparently they were building a potato gun with PVC pipe and cement. They had a can of hairspray and planned to use that as a propellant for potatoes.

"Three of them are adults now," MB said. "I hope they don't get in trouble with the police."

He said they were going to take it down to one of the stalled developments where there are no houses being built right now and shoot it off. He was tense. I reminded him that he and his friends had done a lot worse than that. "Yeah," he said. "We tended to use fire."

There are several videos of people making and using spud guns, or spudzookas on YouTube.

Mensa Boy's Dog Training School

Latest tip for housetraining:

Brainwashing. "It's FUN to not poop in the house."

He and Taylor talked about posting signs around the house to this effect. In bark language, of course.

He Doesn't Like Cucumber

I just found this out. After 27 years and 1 day.