Summerly Bakery and caking

I made cake for a friend's wedding.  It required a HUGE and silly amount of buttercream frosting, which I foolishly allowed the Decorette Shot lady to talk me into adding meringue to, which I never do, because I am essentially a lazy and wicked person, that likes to keep things simple, but I did this time, because I wanted it all the be PERFECT.  When you add the meringue, the frosting GROWS, like The Blob, and gets stuck in the motor of your mixer (let this be a cautionary tale!  It does yield a beautiful, shiny while frosting though.

Transporting many cupcakes

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Naked layers, five hours worth of baking and mixing, and worry. 

After much traffic and winding and worry, we arrived an hour later than I had planned for, to the wedding in the woods, and the caterers would give not one inch of space in the cool kitchen, and the florist had not left the right kind of flowers, and I was very panicked, but my dear assistant, was the voice of reason, and we just made it WORK! We frosted 60 cupcakes and a six layer cake in a HOT, dusty, lodge sort of place. 

Not perfect, but pretty, pretty.  

For the 4th of July, I made this patriotic pie. 

Also in July, I made this, goat-cheese and blackberry confection for a pie contest, that I lost. 

I worked a little with my friend Marta this week. 

She has a dreamy little school at the base of Mt. Tabor and we walked with the children up the steep hillside to the tip top playground each day. 

Playing away on the cool mountain side, reminding each other that this is a volcano, you know.

Today, as we made our way down, the steep grassy path, the smallest, and dreamiest child holding my hand, someone called "HEIDI?" from one of the houses.

"it's me, Joan, Joanie, Jonathan's sister!" 

And sure enough, it was Joan, Jonathan's sister, sitting right there, on the hillside, playing with three babies. 

"Are those your grandchildren?"

My mind raced to do the math, just in case I was making a giant faux pas.

" This littlest one is my granddaughter, and I care for the other two, I have been caring for babies for fourteen years." 

Fourteen years. 

"I'm still doing preschool!"

I raised the hand of the dreamiest of all, child, to demonstrate that I belonged to that group. 

"How on earth did you recognize me?" 

"I'm wearing my glasses!"

I did a quick inventory of my appearance, and even with glasses, I look a great deal different than I did in the 80's! 

I suppose she had seen me last in 1997.

The last time I spoke to Joan, was early March of 1999.

She phoned me, to tell me that Jonathan had died. 

He had been my mentor, my friend, my lover, my everything, when I was in college. 

When I was young and idealistic and ridiculously full of myself and hope. 

He had informed my world vision profoundly, and made me want to work with children in a more focused way. 

"How are Jacob and Sara?"

"They are well, Jacob is a chef, he has two children."

The last time I saw Jacob was at a birthday party for Jonathan's father, in 1997.

He was 12, or 13, and ecstatic to see me. 

We went to a movie, we ate pizza.

We remained friends, despite me breaking up with his dad, we all had FUN. 

The first time I met Joan, was at a Seder, at her home.

I was a bosomy, blonde 19 year old, scandalizing the whole family. 

Who brings a 19 year old to a family Seder? Is what I imagined the sisters saying. 

Who knows what they actually said.

Who cares. 

I ate gefilte fish, and drank the wine.  

"I don't give a shit what anyone thinks." 

Jonathan said often. 

"Fuck them." 

I didn't attend the memorial service, never got the details, couldn't bare to deal with all of those big feelings, and I had a brand new baby. 

I don't do well with crowds, with people, with curated events.

Jonathan would have understood.



 

In the grass is always greener news, I put my husband on a plane for Comic Con, for work, which after two decades he finds annoying, while to me it sounds much more exciting than shuttling small people to soccer camp and making toasted cheese sandwiches and walking the dog. He has been warned not to return home without making some kind of contact with Norman Reedus for me.

We only signed up for two camps this year, because camps are expensive and Freyja is doing some traveling and my mom is in town and it seemed like a good idea.

The camps are soccer camps and she is going with her really, super good friend.

The first one was at a Catholic school in North Portland, which seemed like a no brainer, except Portland has become a traffic nightmare, and you can't drive across town in less than an hour anymore, and once my mother got lost and was a half hour late picking up.

This camp this week was attractive, because it is at a local school, just over on 15th!

HOORAY!

So we picked up the good friend and drove to the school with the name posted on the camp sign up, and waited. 

We waited and waited and waited.

No one showed up.

At 9:46, I looked at my phone and googled the name of the school and "fields" and sure enough, there is a lone soccer field with that EXACT name, across town, in NE.

I was already moderately annoyed, because the camp never sent a confirmation, or any additional information, and that sort of lack of communication is really irritating to me.

On top of that Freyja had thrown the mother of all tantrums over putting on sunscreen, which made me want to rip out my hair.

So off we went to find this mystery soccer field.

Naturally there was no direct route, with Burnside and Sandy now being one way, and a giant delivery truck blocking Davis.

We drove and drove and finally found the place and ran to meet up with the soccer guy.

I told him what had happened and he said

"Yeah, we get that a lot."

Hmmm, perhaps a clarifying e-mail would be in order?

On the way home, I felt a twinge of guilt over getting so hot under the collar over the sunscreen, and decided to stop at Whole Foods, to buy some of the insanely overpriced juice pocket things that Freyja lives for, and I never buy, for her lunch the rest of the week.

As I pulled in a giant delivery truck pulled along side of me, blocking me, to I couldn't move, for about 15 minutes.  

I went into the store and the greeter asked me. "HOW ARE YOU TODAY?" brightly.

"I feel like punching someone in the face."

I went to Lit Hop last evening, with my friend Karen, who is down for Rolf's birthday.

I know a fair number of writerly folks, and I'd hoped to get to see more than one reading, but the night was oppressively HOT, and the friend I'd come to see was from out of town and it felt tacky to listen and dash off, so we stayed for the last reader, a bombastic fellow with black curls and a LOUD voice.

His poetry was catchy.

He may have a future in advertising.

He writes hooks.

My friend is eloquent and smart and humble and he mumbled.

Way more writer, than reader, I suppose.

I sat at the bar between my oldest childhood friend, Julia, a woman I adore, but see rarely.

She has children.

There are women for whom motherhood builds community.

For me, and maybe for Julia, motherhood has shrunk us.

Boiled us down to the barest of bones.

Tony read a poem he wrote for me.

He read it last.

It wasn't sentimental, or lovely.

It was sturdy and a little homespun, I suppose the way he may see me.

The crowd was two hours into drink, and craved bombast and volume.

My poem with it's water, trees, and small town, was a little flat.

I had to drive, so I sat soberly, sweating, my arm touching Julia's cool bicep.

A glass of water would have been welcome, but I would have lost my seat, if I got up, so I sat, blocked in by a very tall woman, who was waiting for space to walk up the stairs.

A woman, who gave not one fig about poetry, or courtesy, her pointy elbow, nearly touching my face. 

Manifest like a mother

 I often say "it's proof of God's love", even though I don't believe in God in much of a way that you would think that he, or she would be proving their love to me, but one thing I do believe in with all of my heart and soul, is the power of goodness and generosity and kindness, I've seen the abundance so often in my life of all of these things not to be a stone believer.

 I belong to a couple of silly Portland groups on Facebook, and a couple of them revolve around found objects.  I am a sucker for found objects, having been poor as an underemployed church-mouse for, well forever, and when not totally broke, let us just say that austerity measures are needed to continue to live in my hella expensive home town.

I also just really like old things.

I like used things, with the exception of underwear, almost always, more than new things.

Last week was a shitshow of a week.

An emotional disaster. 

I'm feeling better, getting back to myself, but geez.

A member of the Facebook group mentioned finding a birdcage on the side of the road.

It was a real beauty, and at first I mistook it for a plant stand, which I had been on the lookout for, to get my collection of Christmas Cactus (cacti?)  off the little side phone table, they had been hogging for months. 

The very next day, the lady with the birdcage tells me she found me a plant-stand.

She finds things for people. 

I also find things for people, so it made perfect sense.

Her finding me this perfect, beautiful plant-stand made perfect sense. 

Her plant-stand went perfectly with my other found plant-stands, and by golly, it could not have been more perfect.

I met her this evening and she hugged me, in the warmest and most kind and sincere way, and I was so deeply moved and humbled and touched and lifted up. 

"Even though we don't have money, I'm so in love with you honey..."

So things got complicated and I quit my job.

Mark says "*&^% those guys" because he loves me.

"You are not good at doing stuff that you can't believe in"

and I say

"thank you for loving me"

and he says

"quit saying thank you, it's my job."

and then I cry and he says

"I hate it when you cry, I just want you to be happy"

 and  that makes me cry about ten times more.

Then I sing the chorus from Danny's Song and Mark says

" I will cut you a check right now, if you stop singing."

and we both laugh like crazy, because, if you don't laugh, you cry.

I scrapped the last of the fancy raspberry jam out of the Maman jar today, and immediately started to imagine what I would do with the jar.

It's a real beauty, as jam jars go, with it's embossed label along the rim and it's handsome gingham lid.

I, who am so strong, against material goods and advertising, can be sucked right in by a jar of jam and the possibilities of it when empty.

I have been this way for as long as I can remember.

A collector.

A hoarder.

An imaginer of potential.

My grandmother was that way, only not as tidy, which I suspect is what made both my mother and her sister something of minimalists.

As a child I was horrified by my mother's lack of sentimentality, these days, as she fills our house with doodads and sundry objects, I see that she probably simply lacked the time and money to accumulate a lot.

I thought about throwing it straight away, into the trash.

Be done with it!

Out of sight, out of mind, type deal, but it's sitting in my sink, soaking.

"You're growing up." 

I heard my Grandma Betty's voice in my head congratulating my feeble attempt to be less of a pack-rat.

I'm growing up, but slowly. 

 

Hippie Salad Hooray

We're headed to a birthday party for one of my old friends.

He is a musician and so are most of his friends.

It is a potluck and bring your instruments sort of thing.


"You better make enough food for us to have dinner, you know those fricking hippies never start on time and there is never any food. there's always that guy that shows up with like one small packet of seaweed, or some bullshit."

Is what Mark said.

He boiled eight eggs.

We made a lot of coleslaw with Moroccan herbs and dill.

I made pasta shells with sweet peas and homemade mayonnaise, Russian horseradish,capers and kale.

He bought a watermelon at the farmer's market earlier in the day.

I don't know if he intends to bring it with him, or eat it at home, tonight, after the party, while we watch a cooking show, or a movie.

That's our exciting Saturday night, most times.

Last year at this same friend's party, I brought shaved brussel sprouts with bacon and maple, mustard vinaigrette, and this stoned girl kept picking the bacon pieces out with her dirty fingers, and exclaiming

"IS THIS BACON? "

and sort of swooning and smearing it around her mouth,

Until I said

"keep your hands out of my salad!"

My friend's mother, who has known me for more than twenty years, laughed out loud, and the girl sauntered off, only to return with a friend and resume her pickery.

My friend said,

"Yo, don't mess with Heidi's p r e s e n t a t i o n." 

but by then I was satisfactorily annoyed enough to leave.  I only really came to see his mother and say happy birthday. 

I don't really enjoy those kinds of parties now that I'm a cranky old lady. 

I woke up abruptly at 6:30am this morning, from a nightmare.

I dreamed that ISIS extremists had mobilized and were traveling though cities abducting young men. 

They were driving around in big square buses, carting people off and killing them.

The buses were blue and gray and shaped like the buses from the 80's.  

I was  planning to hide Maxwell, in our attic. 

I thought I could stash him in the eaves, behind the built in cupboard in my bedroom, where there isn't a back wall. 

I was concerned about him falling though the ceiling into the living-room, and whether or not the bad guys would notice that the cupboard opened right into the unfinished attic. 

I suppose I was counting on them thinking that the craftsmanship of the people that finished the attic in 1916, was better than it actually was. 

I blame NPR for this nightmare, since I listened to a story about a large group of young Somali men leaving Minnesota to join ISIS. 

I don't typically worry about terrorists, or immigrants, or the end of times type stuff.  I have no idea where this came from, but it scared the shit out of me, and my heart was pounding when I woke up.

"I think we need a panic room."

I told Mark. 

"Does Rosie need to pee? Why are you up?"

I was rooting around in that little cupboard, trying to see if I would fit, or at the very least, if I could push the kids through the opening.

In my dream, I thought I would offer myself, instead of Maxwell, but I wondered if the terrorists would think of it as a square deal.

I regretted my lack of weapons in my dream and wished for something more powerful than a baseball bat, to keep under my bed.

When I woke up, I thought about people that feel afraid all the time.

I almost never feel afraid in that way.

I frequently feel outraged, sad, depressed and disgusted by people, but I almost never feel like shooting anyone, to protect my child.

S K I N

I was cooking dinner tonight and a vivid memory, from 1993, came flooding over me, from when I was living with my boyfriend Don. 


He was working as a dishwasher at Hamburger Mary's during the day and playing bass at night, and I was working at some dead-end thing, I think I was doing data entry and teaching a preschool class on Sundays for the Quaker church.

Don was younger than me, by a year and extremely naive, having devoted his whole being to jazz music and not much else.

He also came from a nice family.

He was not what anyone would call worldly at that time.   

Don would come home with lots of colorful stories, because Mary's was a colorful gay bar and diner, the kind of place that generates a lot of FUN!

He also loved the soup that the new cook Gary made.

Every.
Single.
Day.

Don would come home and ask me to try to replicate the fabulous soup, made by Gary the morning cook.

One of these soups was a tomato with orange and basil.

I worked for weeks to try to duplicate that god damned soup, but could never quite get it to be as good as Gary's.

At some point it came up that Gary had recently got out of prison and didn't know very many people in Portland.

He came from somewhere in Idaho, or Montana, someplace small, without a lot of people around.

He was living close to us, in that shitty, narrow building that used to run along West Burnside and 26th.

A real dump.

A real roach motel.

I'd been to that building on several occasions, as it was a place that would rent to punk teens with sketchy employment.

So all the while Don is talking up Gary's cooking to me, he is also talking up my cooking to Gary!

Eventually, Gary invited us over to his place for dinner.

I brought acini di pepe with blue cheese, garlic and olive oil and arugula from our garden, and Gary was going to  make the orange soup. 

We walk down the windowless hall to Gary's place, and knock on the door. 

The door opens and a tall super muscled dude wearing Docs, red, narrow suspenders and a white T-shirt opens the door. 

His hair was slicked back and he had a hard look about him. 

When he reached out to take my pasta, I noticed he had SKIN tattooed on his wrist. 

We ate our food and bullshitted about cooking and then we left. 

On our walk home I asked Don if he'd noticed Gary's tattoo.  

At this time, Portland wasn't yet overrun with tattooed hipster, so it was mostly counter culture types and bikers, that had ink.

"Isn't that the funniest and most ironic tattoo ever?  I mean SKIN! His skin is tattooed with the word SKIN!" 

I gently explained the suspenders, the shoes and what SKIN stood for, while Don looked at me like I had killed a puppy. 

 

Last Saturday I learned that one of my old preschool parents had committed suicide.

It struck me hard, and I thought of this very kind and gentle fellow all week.

I'd kept in touch casually over the years and I knew he'd been struggling. 

People struggle. 

Life is a struggle.

It hurts my heart that he wasn't able to hang on. 

He was a lovely person and appeared to have many people in his life that would agree with my assessment.

I'll gather with some of them in the morning, in a bar.

My friend M will go with me, and we wont know the others, I imagine. 

We only knew him as a dad. 

As a sweet soul who was willing to help.

Willing to garden, or cook, or clean.

The first strawberries of the year are sitting on my kitchen drainboard waiting for a wash and hulling.

Rolf and Freyja picked them yesterday, on the island, in the sun, after feasting on a cupcake AND a cinnamon roll.

I told Freyja that she is the luckiest little girl in the world, to have such an indulgent Onkel, and she told me that I didn't know that they also went to The Skyline, after wading in the river, for french fries and a shared chocolate shake for dinner AND he let her stay up and drive to the airport to pick Mark up.

I was working.

My assistant was on vacation this week and what a week it was.

Good heavens. 

I went to Zoom Care on my way home.

They have this bright and shiny office on Hawthorne.

They are open until midnight, in case you need them LATE.

I was informed of this three times.

Zoom Care is Furnished with modern plastic chairs and a bamboo floor.

They have cobalt walls. 

The don't have magazines.

They do have tea.

I do enjoy a complimentary beverage, when I can get one. 

They have a receptionist named Jeffery, who has perfectly trimmed fingernails, square and strong.

Jeffery asked me if I had weekend plans and there was a sort of awkward pause.

"I can't breath through my nose, and my head hurts, my plan is to not bludgeon myself."

It seems I have a sinus and ear infection.

I was given antibiotics for possibly the first time in a decade, and I feel remarkably better already.

I hid the antibiotics from Rolf.

He had been pestering me to try oil pulling and some kind of black pepper preparation, for my stuffed up nose, for two weeks.

"It's not going to get better, if you don't do the TREATMENT!" 

I let the tea he brewed me grow cold in the cup.

I watched episodes of Chopped on the IPAD.

I behaved in a manner, that made him think I was not serious about feeling better.

I told Rolf I would process the berries.

Don't worry about it. 

But I lied.

I left them on the counter and they look a little worse for it, this morning.

I may make a pastry cream to pay for my sins.

I may use it to fill a genoise cake, and cover the whole mess with the berries, as an act of contrition.

I have been the iron lady my whole life.

A woman of steel.

The anemia of the past few years has worn me down to a nub.

My naturopath looked at my blood-work and said

"your body is in a state of fighting, or exhaustion, you are functioning like someone in a coma. Adrenaline! Adrenaline! You are just running on Adrenaline"

Which made me feel remarkable for everything I do, do.

I know her intention is for me to rest. 

"Can't you go on a yoga retreat? Just GET AWAY for a couple of weeks, a month."

She doesn't know I have never rested in my entire life.

One of my employees was very insolent this week.

Mark said "FIRE HER."

Instead, I scrubbed her classroom floor on my hands and knees and changed five diapers in a row, and then went back to my work, to show her how it's done.

To demonstrate that my standards are exactly high enough. 

I am quite frequently the biggest fool in the world.

My mother used to joke, that I was like the little pig in the story, the one that would outsmart the wicked wolf, by beating him to the punch.  By having already been to the fair, and back, before the wolf had risen for the day.

I did walk into work every morning this week at 6:30am, just to prove I can't be wilted by something as silly as a long day and a stuffed up nose, and no assistant. 

hog pen shipwreck

I've been sicker than a dog all week, coughing, stuffed up nose and eye infection.

Work's been insane, so I just worked on through. 

I had high hopes of getting the housework back on track today, but I can't walk two steps without a coughing fit.

I make a lousy sick person.

I've been irritated with the kids all week too. 

Their lack of support around the house is shocking to me.  I don't ask them to do, what I would consider a whole lot, but they don't even do that little dab, without a big push.

I always helped my mother with housework, and fixed dinner on weekdays.  You can ask, her, she'll tell you so.

I saw my mother working long hours and I felt like a big jerk if I didn't help.  My bother never appeared to share that guilt.

A big part of the problem is my own damn fault.  I babied my son to pieces, and never asked him to do very much until recently. 

I wait on both of them and Mark hand and foot, as my mother's observed.  I even coddle the animals. 

I guess I thought they would learn how to do stuff through observation, but so far, no dice.

Mark's good to help, but he works long, hard hours and I don't like to leave much to him, because I know he's tired.  He also deals with all of Freyja's sport shit, that I hate, so I figure I can handle the house.

Growing up, we weren't allowed to leave the house on Saturday, until everything was done.
That meant ev er y thing- beds changed and made, all dirty laundry washed, dried, ironed, every floor mopped, every surfaced washed, every  tchotchie dusted, lawn mowed, garbage emptied.  

My mother would be up, blasting Gilbert and Sullivan, wielding a broom, vanquishing dust-bunnies, cigarette, dangling Cool Hand Luke style from the corner of her mouth.  

My brother with lollygag and drag his feet, while I worked double time, because I had places I wanted to go. His Saturdays consisted of trashing the place, with several other boys, and mine were all about getting my ass on a bus as soon as I was released from service. 

So when I come home at 5:00pm and see that neither of my children have  emptied out their lunch boxes, so I can quickly refill them, or taken out the trash, or cleaned up their after school snack, I raise a little ruckus.
  
This week, I have mostly left the ruckus to their father, and crawled into bed, and it shows.
  
This place looks like a hog-pen-that is what my grandmother might say. (It took me years to realize that non-farm people don't really get the gravity of farm references.) My father would say the wreck of the Hesperus, but pig dwelling, or shipwreck, this place looked bad. 

Mark instructed me to lie in bed, which was just plain foolish of him.  

He knew better.  

I should have known better, than think you would rest. 

My reluctant troops were mobilized and sort of half-assed it enough to where I can sort of relax.  I'll call my gal Lauren to come help me next week, when I surely will be feeling stronger. 

 

I bought a few things for work, because I am working at a place that requires business casual, which is far afield from that clothing that hang in my closet.

I've worn jeans and hippie dresses for the past 25 years, to every job I've ever had and it's been completely acceptable, if not expected.

So I bought four new outfits, because the four things I rotate now are pretty shopworn, and winterly.

Three of the four were simply not good.

One dress a knit thing with a sort of flowery print and empire waist, was shoddily made, although I liked the design.

The second dress had weird sleeves and too much lining.

It looked like the breastplate  of a suit of amour, and made me feel stiff.

The third outfit was so so. 

The top was fine.  It was white, which is always a gamble, for someone like me, who drinks coffee while terribly near sighted, and has a tendency to spill, but it was cute (although Mark said it was "see though", by which I think he meant white, having almost always only seen me in black).
The accompanying skirt was an abomination.

Hideous.

Long, overly long.

Mark couldn't quit put it into words, but upon seeing it on, Rolf exclaimed,

"there is simply too much FABRIC!" 

and as usual he was completely correct.

He may have not been this correct, since the time in the early 90's when he observed that the dress I was wearing made me look like a secretary.

The lot of it is going back, except for the see-through white tee-shirt with the little bow.

To hell with clothing, I will go on with my Mao inspired peasant dress and they can avert their eyes if they don't like it!

I have few indulgences, when you get right down to it, in relation to the typical middle aged modern person. 

I don't shop.  

I don't really wear makeup, and the one lipstick I use regularly is 5 years old.

We don't have cable, and we are frugal as can be, with the exception of a few meals out per week.

We don't have debt, we don't have toys. 

All of this has a lot less to do with virtuousness, and much more to do with my neurosis regarding money.

I have a naturopath that I see several times a year. 

Maybe five in a bad year, maybe less when I'm betterish.

I used to have a hypnotherapist, but he was insanely expensive and didn't draw blood.

I love my naturopath very much. 

She listens to me.

She pats my hands.

She tells me I matter, and that I'm meaningful. 

She worries that I work too much and rest too little. 

She tells me that she is proud of me, and knows my taste, my struggles, my strengths.

She pours me cups of tea and cares deeply about my well being.

She is like the parents I never had, and for $125 an hour, it's a bargain.

She also got me put back together last year after my iron dipped so low that my MD suggested a blood transfusion and a hysterectomy, which seemed like a terrible idea to me. 

I know tons of people that feel this way about their therapists, but I never had much luck with mental health folks, all they every wanted to do was give me sleeping pills and stuff me full of anti-depressants, that they couldn't really explain fully.

My friend Dom is a big believer in western medicine.  She is game for any kind of treatment, and I suppose that works for her.

I have never felt the slightest bit of care from a doctor in my life, in fact, I have actively felt uncared for and harmed at times.

So I opt to take vitamins and practice Emotional Freeing Technique, and do yoga sometimes and breath deeply and believe strongly in the power of having someone care about you, even if they are just pretending to for money.  

Listening to A Flock of Seagulls can lead to accidental goat consumption and divorce

Maxwell has been taking drum lessons from an old friend of mine. 

My friend the jazz drummer lives way the heck out in North Portland, almost to St. Johns, which is a very long way to go at 2:30pm every Sunday, for a half hour lesson. 

He's a good drummer, that much I know for sure, and so far he seems to be a decent teacher.  Maxwell has taken to practicing once in a blue moon, even, which makes all the driving a loitering around during the lesson seem worth while (for what it's worth, we could probably sit in my friend's living room and wait, but that feels overwhelming to me, since I am not a fan of loud noise).

On a recent Sunday, it was just the three of us, Freyja being away on a trip with my mother, so I suggested that we all go to the lesson, Mark and I would speed grocery shop, then we could have a late-lunch-early-dinnerish thing after. 

I had this fantasy of eating barbecue brisket at the place near the drum lesson. 

My mouth was all set for it, as my grandfather used to say.

On the way to the lesson we encountered traffic, the result of a crash on I-5, which made us very late. 

A half hour late. 

Both Mark and Maxwell were hungry when we left the house, because I made them skip lunch, in favor of this barbecue fantasy I'd created in my head, that was to happen at 3:00pm sharp.

We dropped Maxwell off for the lesson, and went and did our shopping, and encountered even more traffic, and were quite late picking up. 

Mark and the kids all suffer from crankiness brought about by low blood sugar, or hunger.  In fact they need to eat rather often, for such slim and trim people. 

This is a very alien concept to me, who despite being quite plump, can go long periods of time without eating a bit, and feel perfectly shipshape.  In fact, I prefer not to eat all day and just have dinner (which I know is TERRIBLE and possibly makes me the worst person ever).

So here we were in the car, with me merrily thinking I was going to get my brisket, and Maxwell and Mark feeling all woozley and peaked from hunger, when we noticed the barbecue place was closed. 

There wasn't anything to speak of nearby, so off we set for Alberta St. in search of something special.

I was merry.  

I was in search of something special, they were in search of immediate sustenance.

As we drove the conversation turned to Mark playing in a band in high school and he might have mentioned playing A Flock of Seagulls cover tunes, and I might have said

"WHAT!? I wouldn't have given you to time of day!"

and he might have not been in a very festive or jovial mood and said

"Yeah, Max, Mom was really cool and alternative"

and I may have run my mouth a tiny bit, talking some good-natured smack, thinking we were joking, because I totally was and all of the sudden everyone was in a terrible mood. 

The traffic was awful and the mood was terrible and no one was laughing at my hilarious barbs, and the afternoon was just spoiled.

We did manage to find a parking spot, in an area that appeared to have a cluster of cafes, but when we got out of the car, nothing seemed to be just right.

That's when Maxwell suggested that we go into a taqueria  he'd noticed when we drove past. 

I wasn't really in the mood for tacos, since my whole vision involved having something Freyja would hate, since she wasn't around to limit my choices to tacos and pizza, but it seemed like a bad idea to push the more exotic options, at that point.

I could tell straight away that this was not going to be a good kind of hole in the wall taco place. 

This was a bad, not very clean taco place.

To make matters worse the menu was one of those wall mounted jobs, with print so small that I couldn't read it, without my glasses, which I lost when Freyja was in 1st grade.

Both Mark and Max, with their enviable vision, had already ordered, by the time I managed to ask the sullen lady at the counter for a printed menu, and then wander around searching, while she barked vague instructions from her perch behind the counter.

At that point my good humor was completely warn thin and I was furious at Mark for being such a baby about my teasing over his terrible taste in music, when he was in high school, and I was further furious at them for ordering without me and not helping with the menu problem.

I noticed one of the photos on the menu that hung far above me, looked like a soup that I often have at our neighborhood place, so I pointed at it and said,

"I just want #8"

"You want birria?"

"Yes!"

"B I R R I A?" 

"YES!!"

and I went to sit down.

As I joined my cranky family, it dawned on me that I had just ordered goat soup. 

Soup of goat.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I am a goat enthusiast and I was just horrified by my mistake. 

My mouth was in no manner set for goat!

"Goddamn it you guys, why didn't you help me? I couldn't read the menu and I think I accidentally ordered GOAT."  

"Let's just GO, this place is almost guaranteed to suck."

"There is no way I am leaving and giving that woman the satisfaction of thinking I didn't know what I ordered!"

"Mom, you didn't know what you ordered! You ordered goat!"

"She doesn't need to know that!"

Then the goat arrived. 

Unadorned, in a Styrofoam container.

While my family ate tacos, I sipped at my goat broth.

I got up and asked for a lime.

The woman pointed from her stool at a sad pile of juiceless limes on a sideboard, that I'd overlooked (she was not moving from her seat for love, or money, as my father might say).

When they were finished eating we packed up what was left of the goat, and took it home with us, for Rolf to eat in the morning.

I made up a little song about the mistaken goat, in a Styrofoam tote, and Mark apologized for being a dick about the new wave music ribbing, and Maxwell sang a little harmony and added a bit to the verse, and said that it was one of my very best songs, close in quality to "I have my cat in my hands", and we drove back to SE with very little traffic.  

enough to just about break your heart, if you let it

A woman just came to the door, asking for work.

Like a depression era drifter.

A broke down lady with blue, blue eyes and a black backpack.

She looked clean enough, said she and her daughter had just become homeless and were trying to get a motel for the night.

She didn't strike me as a junkie, or a thief, but you really never know.

Mark would not have approved of me talking to her, to giving her a $20, to telling her how sorry I was.

He doesn't like me giving people money like that. He thinks I'm a soft touch (I am).  

It's getting dark, and I don't have any work to do.

If she'd come yesterday or Saturday, she could have helped me with the garden, Maxwell wasn't worth a good goddamn on Saturday with the garden.

He spilled the cedar chips all over the sidewalk and then huffed and puffed a great deal when I asked him to sweep up.

"that's money, you are leaving on the sidewalk."

He doesn't care very much.

That is the side effect of having mostly all you need, a willingness to leave things lay.

Two weeks ago I hired a man named Walter to clean up our shameful mess of a yard.

The mower's been broken for a while and it shows.

I asked my friend John to take a look at it while we were having coffee weeks ago, now.

He tinkered around and got it going, after washing out the fuel filter with gasoline and messing around with the spark-plug, but there is something off with the idle.

John's good with fixing stuff, being an engineer, I suppose, but he wasn't keen to "spend the better part of the afternoon" trying to figure out that idle.

I had high hopes my invitation to dinner would change his mind, but it didn't.  That's when I phoned up Walter from a flier, and he said he'd come right over, and he did.

I liked Walter right away.

I liked his glasses, his horned rimmed glasses.  

Mark thinks I'm foolish for basing my decisions on things like that, but I don't care.

I treated myself to that yard work and I am happy with the results.

I almost never feel like people are going to rip me off, and they almost never have, not the ones I've dealt with directly at least.

This lady at the door, she could be up to no good.

I said, thinking of Mark and his distrust of people,

"I'm a stay at home mom.  I'm just here day and night, with my dog, so I do all the work there is to do, and I'm married, so what I don't do, he does."

I thought I was being extra crafty, letting her know someone is here most of the time.

I have my nosy neighbor looking out, next door of course.  The one that likes to look through binoculars, at everybody.

The lady hugged me when I gave her that little dab of money.

She said "your eyes are stunning, your are so pretty" and I told her hers were too, because they were, I told her that she was a beautiful person to do what she was doing for her daughter.  She had acne scars, a lovely smile,  an open face, a pretty wave to her hair.  I hope she's ok.   

When the woman left, I thought I should have offered her some food to take along.  I felt like a real creep for not doing that, but what to do?

A trick of the light

I treated myself to a facial. 

A fancy one.

An expensive one. 

My skin had been a little bumpy and the space between my eyebrows had grown a little course, in recent years.  As if I'd been in the sun a bit too long.

I also had my brows and lashes tinted, because in my old age, I can't stand to wear makeup, it feels too uncomfortable.

So I have them tinted with vegetable dye every four weeks or so, so I don't look too washed out. 

It is the one thing I sort of keep up with. 

I'm usually cheap as hell with myself, but I decided to splurge.

I don't know if I look any better, but I feel a little less haggard, so I suppose it was money well spent.

I came home and Mark was making noodles and frying lebekase.

Rolf had set the table and even remembered to put a hotpad out. 

Farfala

Bowtie pasta

They had washed the dog and applied flea medicine. 

"you guys hardly need me anymore!"

"Daddy is making NOODLES!" 

I make noodles all the time, but I don't get that kind of reaction.

"You look nice, mom", Maxwell said, because he is Maxwell and knows who butters his bread. 

I look a little blotchy, and my nose is a little red from vigorous scrubbing, but I will take it.

I'm working with a bunch of women that are more made up than the social activist,hippies I typically work with. 
I feel chronically under-dressed, yet completely unmotivated to change it.

I just slog around in my usual state of unkemptness as if it's the most usual thing in the world, which it is for me.  

16

Suddenly my tiny baby was sixteen, It felt like the blink of an eye, the way those cliches go. People who complain about teens are idiots, or maybe they have horrible teens. 
My teen is awesome, and parenting him is my joy, my pleasure, I only wish I had more to offer, a million thank you tokens to the person that makes me real. 
I believe, sincerely, that without him I would have just shrunk and shrunk as a person until I blew clean away one day, without notice.  A vacancy, left in my absence.
We celebrated on the day of his birth with our little family, and Onkie, and my mom. 
We ate shrimp in his honor, and exchanged modest, but meaningful gifts. 
We shared stories of his birth and infancy and early childhood. 
A roomful of people that love one teenager with precise devotion. 
Boats all pointed in the same direction of adoration.

My mother saved the day on Thursday, by hosting a small dinner.  I worked late, and never would have been able to pull everything together.  I looked worse for the wear, but I made it home by 6:00pm.

On Sunday, Freya and I made salsas and cream pies, and spiffed the joint up, to host some friends of Maxwell.  We ate a great deal of pie, and Mark's mother came for dinner.  I made too much food, as usual.  I let them have rivers of soda and chips

Maxwell inexplicably requested chocolate cream pie, after having devil's food cake for his birthday, his entire life.  This was thrilling to me, as I am a big fan of all pie, and chocolate cream pie in particular.  It reminds me of my Grandma Betty, who would make it often, and was good at fulfilling birthday "orders".  I made a vanilla cream pie too, because Maxwell has a good friend that doesn't eat chocolate, and Mark's mother is not a big fan of it either.  Both  we fabulous and decadent and lovely.