shokufeh is…home

You know what tomorrow is? Not the just the start of a new month. Not just payday. It’s the day I return to the world of the medically insured. Score!

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I’m in the Luke camp. Both feet, firmly planted. There was a brief window of time, toward the end of season two, when Lorelai and Christopher seemed like an okay thing. Maybe even a good thing. (Even though, given the proximity to his breakup, she did seem like a rebound.) But then Sherry was pregnant, and Chris decided not to be an absent father to yet another child. It’s hard to say if I was that bummed. Since at the time, I was way more focused on the Rory and Jess angle. ( Just for the record, despite his jerkiness, he remains my favorite of her boyfriends. If he showed up, I’d take him back, er I’d hope she’d take him back.)

(spoilers ahead)

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As mentioned in my last post, MrMan is very ducks these days. He quacks at every opportunity. He pushes his wooden duck-on-a-stick around the house, even holding up our morning departure to pick it up and bring it with us. He points out ducks, both photographed and illustrated, in books. He insists on playing with the rubber ducks in the bathtub. He got very excited yesterday when we discovered a couple of stuffed ducks in a box we’d shipped from Hawaii. We’ve admired the ducks in the park on a couple of occasions this week. Ducks are a big part of our days.

All this to say that, this morning, Sam reported that I was quacking in my sleep last night.

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After days and days of grey, rain, and/or cold, yesterday and today were beautiful. Which means bizarre swarms of mosquitoes. But why focus on the negative? Which meant trips to the park for me and MrMan. Climbing, sliding, running, staring at other kids, stealing other kids’ soccer balls, watching his new favorite animal – ducks, spotting his long-time favorite animal – dogs, and even seeing horses, which aren’t too far down on the list either (and allowed me to distract him toward the car). I love going to the playground after a long interim, seeing how much MrMan’s interaction with the equipment and the other kids has changed since the last time.

Today’s trip to the park happened to coincide with the release of kids from nearby elementary schools, so the playground was a lot busier than yesterday, with older kids. But MrMan wasn’t daunted. I, on the other hand, wasn’t quite sure what to do: one boy, probably about five years old, showed up with his dad. And his gun. A big plastic machine gun. I tensed as soon as I saw it. Not because I thought it was real, but because of the violence it symbolized.

I know parents are different as to what they will and will not allow, what they encourage. But encouraging violence is so very foreign to me. Especially in this city where, a couple of weeks ago, MrMan and I joined several thousand others in marching to City Hall to rally against the violence. The violence that left a person dead every day for the first nine days of the year.

I thought about asking the father to put the gun away. (“Excuse me, do you think that your son, the one with the Holy Name of Jesus sweatshirt on, could leave his firearm at home next time?”) I was trying to figure out for myself what I would do if the boy pointed the gun at MrMan. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. A gaggle of six to eight year old boys arrived and they took turns passing the gun back and forth to shoot one another as they ran around. Cooperation in murder. I’ve heard that, no matter how you try to protect them from the concept of guns, kids will pretend to shoot one another. And maybe I can’t protect MrMan from that. But I feel I should try. I wonder if this situation arises again, I might leave the playground. I don’t know.

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Last night’s dinner included a tasty, fast, and easy dish. (I always remember Nigella saying that people often confuse fast and easy when it comes to cooking. Some dishes are quite easy, but people blow them off as being hard to make, because there may be some time involved. An example of that would be risotto, which involves a length of time standing in front of the stove, but is easy-peasy to make.) I’m not always a fan of using packaged foods, but they definitely have their place. And one of them is when you’re tired and want to eat, and prefer to eat at home.

“Meat” and potato pie

Frozen hashbrowns ~ 4 cups
Olive oil ~ 3 tablespoons
Onion, 1 small, chopped
Smart Ground, 1 12-oz package
Tomato paste, most of a 6-oz can
Sloppy joe powder, 1 packet
warm water ~1 cup
Cheddar cheese, ~3/4 cup

Preheat oven to 425 F.
Defrost hashbrowns in microwave in glass pie dish. Add ~2 tbsp oil and smoosh it with your fingers until it’s layered on the bottom and sides of the dish. Place in oven for 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, saute chopped onion in remaining oil. Once translucent, add Smart Ground, Sloppy Joe powder, water, and tomato paste. (Don’t add these all at once, in case it’s too much for the amount of Smart Ground. I ended up using the whole packet, but not all of the paste.) Mix together in pan until it looks uniform. Simmer a a few minutes.
Once potato shell is done, take out of oven and turn oven temp down to 350 F. Spread “meat” mixture on top of shell. Sprinkle cheese on top of that. (I chopped up some sliced cheese – easier than shredding it myself, without the cost and added preservatives of shredded cheese.) Put back in oven for about 20 minutes, or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

I think that when I make this in the future, I’ll use a bigger dish and increase the proportion of potato, but everyone seemed to like it last night. The above was basically from cooks.com, with a couple of substitutions.

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On Saturday, Sam and I went to the gym. To the gym! I know! It was my first time in a gym in approximately two years, I’m embarassed to say. I’ve been wanting to gym-ify myself for a while now, but just couldn’t get it together. I’ve lost my pregnancy weight, plus some, and can fit in my pants, but things aren’t as um, cohesive, as I’d like. And then there’s the issue of the strength to keep up with a strong – physically and in will – toddler.

Part of the issue is the paucity of facilities in the area. And the cost of the ones that are geographically convenient. Well, convenient would be if they were next door, but let’s say not inconvenient. Luckily, a gym was thrown in our laps. When Sam was deciding which job to take, he was focusing on the job responsibilities. But we really scored more than we expected. First there was that week-long holiday between Christmas and New Years, two weeks after he started. Then, we found out that he, and his spouse (yay, me), have free privileges at his institution’s gym. Step class, here I come.

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We all watched the game this afternoon. And had our hearts broken just a little bit. I’ll admit it, I’m bummed. I thought that if the Bears won, I’d quickly focus on the fact that we made it this far and that I wouldn’t be too down. Maybe tomorrow. For now, I’m focusing on that awesome touchdown Reggie Bush made.

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Dear MrMan,

This week, you turned 14 months old. You may be wondering where your 13 month letter is. Stop looking now. I started a 13 month letter, and a 13-month-plus-13 days letter (which coincided with the last day of 2006), but neither was finished. Somehow, I’ve been so involved with being with you that I missed writing about you. I suspect that a lot of that has to do with how quickly you’re changing. And what exactly these changes are.

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It’s funny – I’m not really into sports. Our house is not one where Sundays are spent in front of the TV, watching the game. But thinking about the fact that the Saints have made it this far, that this Sunday they’ll be playing the Bears for the NFC title, brings tears to my eyes. And this is two days before the game. I suspect that MrMan will not allow me to watch the game in its entirety, but I plan to at least watch the kickoff, and will hopefully catch some highlights as I flit in and out. I guarantee that tears will be shed. The weather forecast makes me fear that they will be tears of disappointment. But I still hold on to the hope that they will be tears of joy.

In the early days after the storm, there were several statements along the lines that if New Orleanians could support the Saints, a usually losing team, through all these years, surely we could make it through losing our city. We are a people used to holding on to faith. Now, believing in the Saints takes on more meaning to me: if the Saints can make it this far, maybe our city can too. (All it needs is for people to believe, a great coach, and hard-working players. Good salaries wouldn’t hurt either.)

Next stop: The Superbowl!

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About two weeks ago, we started transitioning MrMan to his own bed. We pretty much gave up on the crib thing, as it was way too stressful, for all involved. When I was MrMan’s age, my parents built a little bed for me. My brothers also slept in it and, between and after its stints as a bed, it served as a bookcase. It’s hard to explain how it serves as both, but trust me. So, I boxed up the cookbooks it’s been housing for the past almost 20 years, and set it horizontally and moved the mattress from the crib onto it. MrMan’s first reaction wasn’t quite what we expected. He scrambled up onto it and started trying to jump and down. And then down. And then back up again. It was like he was hopped up on sugar and caffeine (which he wasn’t). We were concerned that he’d never see it as a place to sleep.

But within the next couple of days, we moved it to our room, replacing the crib, and started using it for its intended purpose. He naps there, and he usually spend at least half the night there, though he seems to freak out a little when he wakes up and realizes no one is sleeping next to him. I don’t blame him.

Today, he was in meltdown mode, so I decided he needed a nap. I guess I was so thrown off by his behavior that I wasn’t thinking straight, so I was trying to get him to go to sleep in our bed. He wasn’t having it: he just kept wanting to play and read and traipse around the room. When I finally realized the error of my ways and moved us to his bed, he was asleep within minutes.

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