My kids, and my brother's kids, we don't get together very often, but we had a lovely evening, celebrating my mother's birthday.  I wanted to do something special for her.  She had helped so much with childcare this school year. 

Grandma and Grandpa and the grandkids, and Rosie the dog.

I look like my father and his father, and my mom and my brother look like her people, it's funny to see pictures like this.

I cooked my ass off all day for this party.  It was a great success.

A pate so good my mother's husband, called me the next day to say "that was as good as anything you would find in a restaurant." I was flattered and pleased to make an impression.

Caviar topped eggs.

Rock and Roll Lifestyle

Maxwell plays in a African Marimba group.  He goes to the teacher's house each Wednesday after school and practices with five other children.  Most of them go to his arts focus school and a couple don't.  A couple go to regular school and come to play with this lady that is very invested in marimba, and African music.  Her husband builds the giant instruments.  Her daughter plays along.  Many years ago, my boyfriend, the badman played with this lady too, so I knew her a little bit. I knew who she was, I didn't know her.   It's funny how small a town Portland is.  I was totally unprepared for how awesome the kids would sound.  They were excellent.  I wished my father could have been there.  He likes that sort of thing.  My mother is agitated by noise.  She would have come, but she would have paced and smoked outside, and her pacing and smoking would have been embarrassing to me, and so it was just as well that she had a conflict.

Mr. Fuzzyfeet

The most beautiful boy in the world makes music

A girl who lacks patience.  A girl that is bothered by noise.

I am terribly fond of this band and this song, which has little to do with anything in this post.

sometimes you get what you need

I took the kids to Hoda's  for dinner, since Mark has his improve class on Wednesday evenings these days and I had a long draining (not bad, just really busy and I neglected to take a lunch) day at work.  
Hoda's  is my third favorite Lebanese place in town.  My first favorite is Nicolas on Grand.  It is always too crowded and only takes cash; I never carry cash.  My second favorite is Yahala, which is terribly s  l  o  w, which doesn't work well with kids.  So off to Hoda's we went when Freyja voiced a hankering for "that kind of food that had hummus and really HOT bread."
Everything was good and for once I didn't order too much food.

My last work commitment today was to attend a town meeting at city hall, which was kind of cool in concept and pretty boring in practice. I felt sort of under-dressed, like the token hippie at a business meeting, with my ruffled peasant blouse and red clogs.  I am pretty used to spending time with young children and their care providers, and most of my clothing can take crawling around on the floor, and drool. My mother has been nagging me to look more pulled together for years and as I walked into that auditorium, I wished, for a moment that I had listened to her.

We have been re-watching season I of Justified, so that Maxwell can get caught up,  he has been watching season two and three with us. It holds up well.  It's Elmore Lenard and I like it, what else is there to say?

I have been forcing more books on Maxwell.  He just finished "city of thieves" and "the road" (he took it out of my shelf, I would have suggested "the boarder trilogy". 
I am trying to get him to give John Irving a twirl, but he might be too young. 
He did dig "1984" and has declared it his favorite novel EVER.  
We learned that he has been accepted into a small arts charter school for high school.  They offer advanced placement with college credit, in tons of classes, a beautiful facility and just too many other perks to list.  I feel sort of guilty for abandoning Portland Public, but they just such too profoundly for me to trust my baby to. We have an application in to MLC, Portland alternative mainstay, since the 60's, but really, to tell the truth, Maxwell needs structure, so this goody two shoes school will be a great fit. My mother was beside herself with nerves as we waited for the acceptance letters to arrive, she some how had the notion that I was going to send Maxwell to MLC, a hotbed of pot smoking, juvenile delinquents, in the heart of NW Portland, a neighborhood she never quit trusted, even though I made it my home for ten years.  She had the same reaction when I tried to talk her into letting me go there for high school. 
I have no idea where she gets her ideas, but she has steadfastly clung to this particular one since 1982.

Freakishly warm weather, made eating outside possible!

Not feeling terribly festive

Easter decorations

window sill looking springy

Vegan banana bunt cake with apples and pears

another cheap-o Chinese foot massage place I like to go to

Rainbow Gathering

Moonshadow feels underrepresented on this blog.

My serious 14 year old

Freyja having a croissant bigger than her head at Crema on 28th.  I love this place, my family feels sort of Meh about it.  We snuck out early on Saturday to let Mark rest.

For a second birthday celebration at Mark's mom's house I made the rainbow cake that is the toast of the internet right now, Martha Stewart even has a version.  I also put a fruit rainbow on top of mine, just to be fancier than Martha.

Birthday Boy

I can't even write about my son without getting totally emotional. 
I suppose that is the way of mothers, to be sentimental about their children.  
This year he chose to go to a comic convention here in town, instead of having friends over. 
He went with his friend Zach, who is also interested in comics, it was a simple solution to what to do for the kid's birthday.  I feel like he is much loved and celebrated everyday, so I am not terribly worried about not doing a big party.  I am making dinner for just us, and we will eat a lot of cake and call it good. 

Maxwell on his birthday and as a five year old in the photo

He asks for the same cake every year.

This year he wants the Swedish dinner, the meatballs, noodles, stuffed eggs, bay shrimp, salad, beets.  He is easy. 

Rolf left for Germany on Monday, on Sunday he said "why don't we cook something?" So we did.  He made his mashed potatoes and I pretended not to notice the amount of butter he added.

I made stuffed mushrooms with shallots.

And this handsome spargel

The buttery, buttery potatoes

Freyja played with her goat and stayed out of the way

And helped me make this giant apple pie, and an apple crisp.  There was a LOT of pastry.

It must skip a generation

A friend was lamenting the old "what to make for dinner" question on Facebook today.
Boy can I relate.  My children eat about six thing a piece, and not the same six, so dinner can be a real hair ripper.
Add in all of Mark's finickiness and his allergies and sensitivities and you really find yourself running a short order cafe. People, usually the ones without kids, will say "you control what they eat", these people have never had their evening spoiled by a fight with a five year old over dinner.
Maxwell could sometimes be successfully bullied into eating what I demanded he eat, but Freyja would rather die than give in, so you may as well just save your breath and our patience and make her a grilled cheese, not even a grilled cheese, no that would be too mixed up for the Princess and the Pea girl.
She would require cheese on a tiny plate, and a slice of bread, dry, on another.
Oddly enough she will chow down on some hardcore stinky cheese, just as long as it's plain.
Maxwell is a much more adventurous eater than Freyja,  but he has the annoying habit of changing his likes and dislikes with an irrational frequency.
Freyja is rather steadfast in her opinions on food.
My father hates vegetables, or so he says.  He and his sister have both lambasted my poor Grandma Betty's cooking more than once.
I, on the other hand have only the most fond memories of her cooking, and would forgo most restaurant meals for some of her dumplings, or stewed tomatoes, or even green salad, there was just something really nice about the way she put a salad together, that I rarely find anymore.
Growing up, I hated my mother's cooking, which I realize now was more a result of poverty and lack of time, than anything else.
She had a terrible habit of making soup, by putting in way too many things that in my opinion do not go together.  I hate soup as a rule to this day.
If it has corn in it, I will not be eating it, no matter what.  I even offended a co-worker recently by stating innocently enough, that hominy is the ONE, the one thing I will never eat, only to learn that she had chosen the posole for lunch. Rolf once bought be one of those industrial cans of hominy as a joke, and it sits, mocking me in our cupboard, a memory of too much nasty soup.
She also tries to sneak old lettuce in. catsup
You really have to watch her.
She was so pleased when she first went to Belgium, to find that putting lettuce in soup and pureeing it was perfectly normal.
She tried to pass off some old lettuce soup to me just last week.
My mother's mother was also guilty of tying to camouflage old left-overs, but she typically did it with meatloaf, which is somehow less disgusting than limp soup.
My uncle has a revulsion of gravy, for the same reason I hate soup, it is just a stretched out liquid reminder to him that you don't have enough money for a proper meal.  I personally love gravy, but I respect his boundary, despite the fact that he puts ketchup on eggs, which is just wrong.

getting my socialist on

A few days ago my friend with breast cancer sent me a  text saying that her hair has all fallen out. 
I wasn't quite sure what to say, since there doesn't really seem to be an up side to the whole situation, so I asked her the question that I have had for a long time, but never had the appropriate person to ask, which is  "does all your hair fall out, or just the hair on your head?"
She said that all you hair can fall out, but so far her's is just on her head. 
I was wondering this because most people look really lousy without eyebrows. 
Now, it might seem like a bad thing to ask a sort of personal hair question to a person going through chemo, but I know my friend well enough to know that she would find my question funny and that it would please her to have me say something funny, rather than pile on a lot more concern, which I have already done and has sort of been done to death to her.
Everyone is super concerned, but no once can do a damn thing, so there we are all, sitting around being concerned and serious, doing nothing. 
Baking muffins, that is what I have done.  
Baking muffins and making silly cracks to make her laugh.  
That is just about all I can think of to do.
We found out recently that another mutual friend of ours has thyroid cancer.  She is a nice lady, one of the nicest people I can imagine. 
One of those nice people with a nice life. 
She is a lesbian, and has a nice wife, and two nice children and chickens. 
And nice dogs. 
And cancer. 
It made me really outraged when I heard about it. 
I feel that cancer should be reserved for the rich and horrible. 
They deserve to be sick and can afford the care that comes along with sickness.  they can afford to be off work and nauseated.
My newly bald friend is a social worker.  She is poor, with shitty insurance that only covers the crappiest of care. She is a single mother, with a daughter that needs her.  It makes me livid to think of her being sick while some smug asshole with lots of money gets to be well. Mark tells me that my feeling that way is irrational.  I felt exactly the same way when Maxwell was sick as a baby, and when Mark was diagnosed with cancer last year. 
It just isn't right. 
I hold a grudge, the injustice of it all makes me crazy. 
I wish there was someone to complain to. 
I wish there was some kind of cosmic customer service counter, where I could fill out one of those comment cards.  Boy do I love those cards!
Mark had his cancer screen on Friday and it was clear. 
It has been 15 months since his surgery and he is doing well.  He is also a nice person, who had no business getting sick and making his wife nervous. 
He is a person who, despite annoying me frequently, has not ever done anything bad in his whole life. 
One of those sickeningly honest and righteous people, that vote, floss and pay attention to current affairs. 
He doesn't even eat cheese for god sake.

We had lunch at "shut up and eat",  today, and the food was generally very good, high quality and HUGE.  I am not a super fan of bar seating, which is what is mostly available, but we lucked out and got a small table.  This would not be a good place to come with a large party, which is sort of a shame, since it is the kind of place to take out of town guests. Very Portlandia, with lots of organic options and pickled thing appearing in unusual combinations on sandwiches made with really stellar bread. I am a fan of Pearl Bakery bread, so that makes it a double win.  Mark is usually not a big friend of bread and sandwiches, but he enjoyed his meatball sandwich and liked the bread, which was a big relief, I always feel guilty for suggesting a place, and then having it turn out to displease him; he is a bit of a picky eater.  I would say this place is wayyyy better than the much lauded Lardo.

Porkchops with mushrooms and tomato, polenta in the yellow dish

Roasted veggies

I impose my healthful food on the family fairly often, but every once in a while they win; tonight Mark requested porkchops, with polenta and I obliged with the caveat that a pan of roasted mix vegetables go along side.  I find polenta cumbersome to cook, when stirring it for ever on the stovetop, so I opt for the quick and easy method of baking in the oven (2 cups polenta, 8 cups water, salt, seasoning, and half a stick of butter of fake butter of your preference. Bake in a preheated oven <350> for about an hour, stir once mid way through).  If you are really lazy, you can throw raw veggies in and let it all cook together.  If you really dig the rubbery texture, let this polenta cool over night, then cut into squares and saute in olive oil the next day.  For the chops, I seared them, then braised with chopped tomatoes, shallots, mushrooms, basil, oregano, garlic, olives.

everything changes

I got a call from my friend Joe today, a voicemail that said "I am sorry about your grandfather passing and about the house, it was a gem."  Joe grew up down the street from my grandparents and his parents sold their place about 10 years ago when his dad got Parkinson's disease.  Their house was not bulldozed, as far as I know, but it was hard.  Joe had done a lot of lovely brick patio work that I think was done in by the new owners.  I can't even make myself drive out there to see the bulldozed place, it makes me a little sick inside.  Joe said "I hope you are coping." He knows me well, even though we haven't been close since I got married.  We were very close when in my late teens and through my 20's. 
Joe is a collector of antiques and a picker, making his living picking up junk and reselling it as treasure.  He has collected since childhood.  We have that and reading in common.  He loves beautiful things.  In high school, before he realized he was gay, he would tell me, you are so beautiful, you stop traffic.  He was and remained a big cheerleader of mine, even when I felt like something the cat dragged in. I loved spending time with him, because he loved all thing domestic and was full of praise for bean soup and embroidered pot holders and noticed the littlest details of how I might have changed my hair.  We lived in the same building on Broadway Drive, in the late 80's, a ramshackle mess of a duplex, me upstairs and Joe down, without a bathroom sink.  He would come up to wash his hair.  I have a photo someplace with Joe in his pajamas with a towel turban on his head, standing in my kitchen.
That duplex has been bulldozed too.  It deserved it though, it was a firetrap, with gaping spaces between the siding that let the wind blow through the house.  Rolf remembered, just today, the ice in the toilet bowl one February. 
That was the year I got Teddy Braun.  There was snow on the steps and the poodle blended in perfectly.
Joe introduced me to Jackie, who would become my roommate.  Jackie was a painter that wore jackboots and her coat inside all the time.  She loved the poodle, so I was sold, despite her rough exterior. 
She drove a mid 70's Camero, that had belonged to her mother.  It suited her mother more than it suited her.  She was the only person that was more neurotic about cleaning than me, so made a perfect roommate.  She used to jog, and paint and I would cook and work and go to school and we would have dinners with themes.  It was an exceptionally lovely time in my life.

It has been a hotbed of activity around here today; we finished a plaster repair job that we started last week, which was one of those really dirty, yucky jobs that makes you wish you had a landlord to do.  We had a leak in the fall, that was repair, but the leak caused a lot of plaster damage and water stains, in the landing area going into Freyja's bedroom.  I peeled and peeled and in the end it required pulling out all the original plaster all the way down to the lathe, then filling it in (in this case with newspaper, then covering it up with this handy sticky metal plate thing, and finally with even handier gauzy tape stuff, then finishing the whole thing off with a nice layer of new plaster.  Some people (like my husband) find this type of job intimidating, but they, unlike me, have not lived in a lot of crappy old falling down, OLD houses that are made of plaster and lathe, rather than wallboard and drywall!  I have done this repair a million times and am pretty darn good, if I do say do myself.  Today we sanded it down, and sanded down an ugly old repair job, someone less talented than I did, before we moved in.  I also primed the wall, so next week I can paint! Woo hoo.
Since we were vacuuming and sanding and dusting stuff, I ask Mark to vacuum our room, which is one of those slanty roof jobs, that are pretty easy to vacuum, if you are just a little bit taller than I happen to be. Somehow in the course of all that cleaning he broke the floor lamp that lights my sewing area, and the chair where he reads to Freyja at night, so I was required to make an emergency trip to Ikea, to purchase a lampshade, to fit onto an Ikea hanging lamp/cord combo deal I got out of their "as is" section about five years ago, and had stashed in the closet. So pictured above is my sewing area with a nice new lamp, which looks a lot better in person that it does in that photo.  And feel free to admire the custom made slipcover on that old Naugahyde chair, that I made without the benefit of a pattern, when Maxwell was a baby.  The photo is rotten and doesn't show that those windows are floor to ceiling and about five feet tall, and there is a little triangle above them where I have a very silly collection of vintage Steiff animals.

While all of the home improving was going on Freyja and her friend were having a gay old time with Rosie, pushing her all around the neighborhood in a doll stroller.
Freyja wants me to add that Rolf's girlfriend made her the lovely mouse shadow box pictured above.

this is as good as it's going to get

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, which is always a little hard for me, because it reminds me of my friend Leo's suicide, and who wants to feel festive  while thinking of that?

I told Mark not to worry about trying to pull something together (but didn't mention the whole depressing suicide part) because Thursday is a really busy day for us, and it would have just been one more thing. 

I finished work a little earlier than I expected to, so I set the table and cleaned up and bought two gigantic T-Bone steaks for Mark and the kids, since they like that sort of thing, and some tulips for myself and some organic salad, because I like that sort of thing, and made a custard tart with insanely expensive out of season berries, because that is how I roll, and I listened to this record in Leo's honor. 

Creative is as creative does

I started this quilt of teeny, tiny strips of cast off clothing and bargain bin fabrics, when I was nine and I worked on it for a YEAR.  I finished it the spring after I turned ten, and gave it, in all it's cacophonous colors, and king size, to my mother, as a birthday gift.  The blocks are machine sewn, but it is hand finished all around, in neat and tidy little stitches in orange thread.  I didn't notice that the sheet I bought for the back was a fitted sheet, so I had to cut out the elastic corners and inset a sort of matching fabric to make it square. It has been used pretty much constantly for the past 35 years and has held up beautifully.  The color scheme horrifies my adult sensibility, but I admire my tenacity.  Both of my children slept under it with me every night until they were five and sometimes after.  

this is a little edited out piece, I noticed of myself, in the big mirror in Don's studio, taken, as I was making photos of him for his blog.  I like the way my finger is bent.  I LOVE my IPhone for photos, I just do...

kale, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry salad with cilantro and cider vinaigrette, quinoa with sweet potato in the background 

Freyja and I on her birthday

I often get frustrated with all of the projects Freyja has going ALL the time, in every corner of our house. 
I went to pick her up today from my mother's house and I found my mother and Freyja seated in the middle of the livingroom with glitter coating most surfaces, and bits and bobs of stuff everywhere. 

My stepfather silently running the fancy vacuum cleaner over the expensive carpets, not a drop of annoyance to be found.  He is pleased when my mother is pleased and she is pleased when things are busy and chaotic.  when there is LIFE being LIVED in the house, amid the knick knacks and shiny things.

The house felt a little like you imagine Santa's workshop to feel.  My mother gleefully gluing felt on a Valentine box, that I would have not had the patience not, to correct or improve. 

Isn't it a beauty! Freyja did it all herself, I am just finishing up the bottom! 

My mother is not artistic or so she would say, so she has said my whole life, although she makes remarkable embroidery and has made both of my children amazing wall hangings featuring "the little prince" and "my father's dragon", that made from fabric, pieced together perfectly.

When I was a child we were poorest of poor, but I was provided with all the art supplies any child could wish for, when I was ten my grandparents and my mother bought me a real sewing machine, because I sat around hand sewing Barbie clothes and other projects compulsively, as if driven by some mad sweat shop owner.

I crocheted poorly but with gusto, which many years latter I would parlay into a mediocre knitting habit, before it was hip to knit in SE Portland, dressing my baby boy in ugly sweaters until he finally begged me to stop at age five. 

When I was seven I wanted to cook, and was allowed to dabble in the kitchen in a manner that I would never permit, either of my children or even my husband to do, to this day. I am frequently my mother's harshest critic, but when I think of the width and breath of experiment allow me, I know that the result is who I am today. It is highly unlikely that I will ever lighten up and allow my children the space and room for experimentation, art and craft that I had as a child, but I do recognize it and admire it from a distance.

Learning to live with it

The house feels insanely crowded, with three animals and all of Freyja's art supplies covering every inch of every room. 
Last night Rosie, the black dog inexplicably peed in my room for good measure. 
I suppose just to remind me that there isn't a single inch of space that I can call my own. 
We also have this piano now, which I am trying hard to get used to. 
It has displaced my little orange settee, that I love, so I am a little cranky. 
I agreed to the piano, because I think that Freyja will do well with lessons, but I do have some lingering resentments around my general lack of space.
I have recently had fantasies of renting a truck, filling it with the contents of our house and taking the lot to the dump.
The cat and the black dog have also shredded the sofa with their sharp claws, so it feels like every where I turn everything is a shambles no matter how hard I try to keep thing neat.
I don't remember feeling this way about Maxwell.  He never covered the house with his belongings, or crept into my personal spaces and he most certainly has never thumb tacked anything to the wall.  I don't remember feeling this way about Teddy Braun, while he did like to bite people, he never scratched up the furniture.  I knew cats were trouble and I never wanted one, this one is a fine cat, for a cat, but in the end I am a poodle person, pretty much. 
 

Watch this film

Not that he needs my help, but everyone should see my friend Brian's film Alien Boy
and here is a Twitter thingy about it.  https://twitter.com/Alienboyfilm

Techno peasant

Technology is so tricky. 
I went to my friend Don's studio yesterday to help him set up his webpage, but then neither one of us could even log on, so it was kind of a bust. 
I helped him set up a blog like this one, which I like because it links to all the other Google features, that I find handy like the calendar. 
That calendar really saves my life a lot of the time.
Another friend of his had set up the domain name which was all fine and good except for the fact that Don is even less savvy than I am and that is saying a lot, so it really wasn't helpful.
We talked about how if you have a tool that you don't know how to use and therefore don't wind  up using it, then it really isn't very helpful, where as if we set up a simple blog, and he uses it often, then it is a good thing. 
He didn't require a lot of convincing.
I am trading him help for bass lessons for Maxwell. 
I am actually trading him dinner once a week for bass lessons, and then I felt guilty and told him I would help him with his computer stuff. 
I don't know why I felt guilty, because we have been friends for 21 years and I have definitely done enough to earn some bass lessons, but it is my nature to worry about these kinds of things. 
So I have provided some pretty good meals for the past three weeks and now a little tech assistance, so I am feeling like I am not beholden, which is my objective.

My work week shook out so I had Friday off this week, which makes me really happy.  I was fine working Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but when I was needed on Thursday, it pleased me a lot. 
Having some flexibility has been really lovely.  I wish I could lighten up and enjoy it more, but there is this residual guilt that I should be checking my e-mail or phone constantly, like I used to have to do.  In a staff meeting on Wednesday my boss told me categorically that I was forbidden to work on my off hours (ok, I sort of asked to to forbid me, after she said it nicely a couple of times, because I am not used to people being very nice to me). Anyway, the point is that I had Friday off, so I was able to do a lot of cleaning up, so I am more free over the weekend to be with Mark and the kids without feeling like I have to mop the floor, which is always nice.
I think I will meet with Don again next week to fill out his blog a little more and to set him up on Twitter.  I think Twitter is perfect for him, actually, maybe better than Facebook even. I am exciting to have this project. 
I have set myself up on Twitter mostly to practice, since it seems to be a requirement for lots of jobs theses days. 
It isn't really a good platform for me, because I tend to be wordy. 
In fact I enjoy being wordy, it sort of defines my style. 
Yes, I am unapologetically wordy and I like it that way! (I am channeling Lady redundant Woman, from the PBS series WORD GIRL!)
I also hate all those little time saving devices like U, instead of you.  Man, do I ever hate those a lot. 
I love Facebook though, because you can prattle on and be a wordy as you want to be. 
That works well for me. 
I have a number of penpals- that is how  I think of friends I only know from Facebook, that I really enjoy, so for me Facebook is a real lifesaver, being someone that is somewhat isolated in real life.
Mark, who does not use Facebook, because he talks to people all the damn time in real life and wants a little peace and quiet in his private life, thinks I am insane. 
He does use Twitter though, mostly to forward things other people say to friends.  He is in a big rush all the time, and not at all wordy, so it works well. 
I find that rushed curt style of Twitter kind of rude. 
All the left off punctuation kind of offends me, even though it shouldn't. 
I am a little bit of a ninny in that way and in other ways too I suppose.