So Are The Daze Of My Life

Today I wrote a thank you note on a Spongebob card and mailed it to my kid's new pediatrician.  Why?  Because I kind of hate the whole medical industry with every fiber of my being (and I am quite fibrous, believe you me) and so when I find an office that is actually nice to me and doesn't make me want to scream and kick my feet and throw myself prostrate on the train table in the waiting room, well, I send them a thank you card.

What I wanted to say (but didn't, mostly because it was a very small Spongebob card after all) was:

Dear Dr Drake and staff,

Thank you for answering your phone.  Promptly.  And for not putting me on hold for eleventy seven minutes, have me push #1 for English, put me through to someone else, force me to speak clearly to a robot who misunderstands me and tells me to repeat myself four times and then disconnects me, and all that jazz.

Thank you for taking new patients and for not sighing at me when I asked if you were taking new patients like the idea of seeing me and my sick child for a grand total of ten minutes per year and then extorting a ridiculous sum for it is just too, too much for you to bear.

Thank you for having a kind receptionist who remembered my Roo's name as we went in and as we went out.

Thank you for not batting an eye when I said I hadn't vaccinated my gremlins.  Thank you for not sighing, preaching, or scribbling down a long sentence in your notes that I would imagine would say things like "Idiotic mother neglecting children... Probably gave birth at home.  Most likely homeschools.  Expect children to die of easily preventable diseases immediately if not sooner.  Call CPS immediately. "

Thank you for having a background in food allergies which is the stuff dreams are made of in my life.  I was not impressed with the local allergist office here who, coincidentally, are rude, unorganized, rude, late, rude, didn't ever call in Moose's prescription, and are rude.


Thanks for telling me Roo's ear was healing nicely on its own thanks to my warm compresses and oils and she did not need any other treatment.


Lastly, thanks for having a name that totally sounds like a soap opera doctor's name.   It just gives me no end of giggles.  I don't know why.  Probably because anything related to medicine makes my brain cells melt and dribble out my ears onto my shoulders.  


Love, Melyssa.


And just to be clear, I don't REALLY hate medical professionals.  I just hate medical professionals who don't act professionally.  And the insurance companies.  Other than that, I like them fine.  I just don't like going to them because somehow I turn from Nice Sweet Ballerina Shy Bookworm Girl who considers 'fart' a naughty word, to Fire Breathing Dragon Phone Slamming Threat Hissing Tea Cup Throwing Girl.  Ask my husband about this strange medical malady.  He will confirm it.  He now handles every phone call to the insurance companies because I hung up on the last one.  And I don't hang up on people!  Really!  It's rude!  And I don't do rude!  But I don't want to offend all the nice doctors and nurses and staff out there because someday I might get some dreadful disease that I won't be able to treat with garlic or olive oil or Pau d Arco or Enya music or denial or Pinot Grigio or copious amounts of Nyquil.  Just kidding on the Enya.  And I will need those doctors and nurses and staff and I wouldn't want them to be offended or have notes about me.  That'd be bad.  Like, epic bad.

P.S.
Did you get the title?  Soap opera?  Mixed up with "daze" instead of "days?"  Get it?  HAHAHAHAHA! Laugh with me, my minions, laugh!  It's the best medicine...the doctor told me so.

In The Night Kitchen

I'm a big fan of books.  Yes, you know.  I'm walking on a cloud these days because we unpacked my LAST BOX OF BOOKS in two years, thanks to a home that is ours (so to speak) and not a corporation who would panic and call a meeting if I so much as moved a salt and pepper shaker, much less stack my books the wrong way.  My luvah bought me a huge craigslist bookshelf that was appallingly ugly until we put all the books in it and now, hopefully, the books are all you see.  


I like my books somewhat willy nilly.  I'll never alphabetize them for the following reasons:  1. No one would replace the title correctly  and 2. They look better grouped according to genre  and 3. The ones belonging to itty-bitties go on the bottom where their jam sticky hands can access them better and the grown up ones with questionable love scenes or random acts of violence go up top where my jam sticky hands can access them better.  


About a year or two ago, I made a resolution.  I don't make resolutions so this was nifty for me.  You ready for it?  Here it is: I will never say no to a child who asks me to read to him/her.  Even if I'm doing twenty eleventy things and my  hair is on fire, I will say yes and crack open that book.  I'm hoping this will reverse the rest of the bad mommying I've done over the years...you think?


So...we bring you a favorite around these parts (not as beloved as Socks For Supper, the last book we shared with you here) that was recently rescued from its life of captivity and exile in a brown box:


In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak.

Being good ol' Maurice (ha!  Beauty and the Beast! ahem. Sorry.  I digressed into Disney for a minute) it is very similar in style to Where the Wild Things Are.  A boy goes to bed and has a strange adventure, only Mickey's makes Max's look tame and domesticated.

Oh look.  Some of my pictures did a head stand.  How odd.  Well, frankly it'd be much easier for me if you'd just turn your head ever so slightly than it would be to make me actually take these off now and start over.  Believe me.

So, anyway, Mickey falls through some kind of space and time continuum and runs into some fat and happy bakers who end up baking him into cake.

Mostly Moose goes for this book cuz there's a lot of gratuitous nudity.  And anytime there's nekkedness involved, a small manchild is gonna be there.

I love the red nosed bakers.

He escaped a run in with a loaf of bread.
Whew.

Then he falls in some milk.  And naturally his clothes fall off again.  Cuz that's what happens fourteen times per day when you are a small manchild.

Don't think about a boy being in milk that will later be used to bake something.  We all know what little boys do in the bath water that involves the golden arches and making a homemade jacuzzi.

Eventually, Mickey gets out of that strange dream land, shakes off his bread crumbs and hollers COCK*A*DOODLEDOO!  We don't know why.  Again, boys.


It's a classic.  Read to your poppets and muppets and small menchild.  You'll be glad you did.


P.S.  Can we all sing a rousing verse of Reading Rainbow now?  Puhleeze?  You know you want to...


Butterfly in the sky...
...I can go twice as high...
Are butterflies big readers?  Don't know.  But if PBS and the exuberant man with the funny headband on his eyes says yes, then who I am to disagree?

salad cake, hold the Ranch

My mommy-in-law has an enviable figure that she keeps svelte, you see, due to a mad, crazy, frenzied love affair with salad.  She loves salad the way some people love their gambling habits, spouses, or Tim McGraw.

Aw, Tim. Why don't you love me back? Why?

Anyway, she isn't a big fan of sugar or fat, or fatty sugars, so we baked her a birthday cake and disguised it as salad.

Sorry about the fuzzy photo...setting was wrong.  Either that or I should have licked the frosting off the lens better.

Here.  This one is shinier.

Like the croutons?  They're cake.  I dazzle myself with my creativity sometimes.

Okay, I saw the idea somewhere else.

The veggies are marzipan, which taste better than fondant.  Plus, I couldn't find fondant and the lady at Fred Meyer kept trying to tell me how to make fondue.

So, there you go:  diet cake, light on the sugar and heavy on the veg.
Not really.  But it goes better with coffee and fuzzy socks than cuddling up with a tossed salad.

Veteran's Day

My grandpa Rodney Oens.  My mom's dad.  He served in Korea during World War II.  I have his photo album from that time.  Tiny black and white photos of landscapes, people, little nekked Korean kids, and dead bodies.

He was a bit of a gypsy.  A real man of all work, master of none.  He was jovial and kind but he was also a stinker because he always got his own way.  He made excellent muffins.  He and my gramma fought.  A lot.  But sometimes they held hands.  They got married when she was only 16.  Did I mention he was a stinker?  When he had his first stroke, he went from being a real go-getter to being glum.  He could have gotten better, but he didn't because he was angry.  When I would take my little girls to see him in the VA nursing home he would pretend he couldn't talk.  Then if I left the room, he would ask Mike what the score of the baseball game was.

He died a few years ago.  Mike and the girls never knew the fast moving blur that he used to be and that I remember him as.

This is my grandad on my other side.  My dad's dad.  He served in the navy during World War II in the Pacific.  He was a tough nut.

When I think of Neal Landrum I think of sweet iced tea, a southern accent, and cigarette smoke.  He and Gramma (above) smoked all the time.  They had a house in Califonia that I can still smell to this day, twenty years since I've been there.  There was a guest bedroom that had a yellow chenille bedspread and they always had fudge pops for the grandkids.  He called me Lisa.  Then my cousin named Lisa was born and that got confusing.  He wasn't always a saint to everyone, but he was good to me.  Lung cancer took him a few years ago.

My gramma up there is my only surviving grandparent.

This one is my father in law, Keith, giving my husband-to-be a bottle.  How weird is that??  He was in the Navy and had a lot of crazy adventures.  He was on the USS Oriskany.  If you'd like a history lesson, look that up.  This is a video link to a fire that took place in '66.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCNVBFFARkE    He's there somewhere, in the smoke.  It's not the only fire on board a ship that he was on...he was something of a black widow.

Here's a video of it sinking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNK0GM3OvU

Now it's one of the top ten diving spots in the world.  A huge coral reef.
My father in law is kind, funny, likes dumb jokes (like me), makes a killer pie, is unassuming, gentle, a morning person who always beats me to the coffee.  He likes to say that he dodged the draft.  By enlisting, that is.

This is Ian.  He's married to my sister and they have three rugrats (baby Buck wasn't born here during this shot.  I had a great shot of Ian demonstrating the difference between a soldier and a park ranger by the way you tip your hat, but for the life of me, I can't find it).  He's in the Army.  He's being deployed for a year on January 1.  I don't really like to think about it too hard.  He eats weird things like seaweed and wasabi everything and kelp popcorn, or some such thing.  He is also a cop.  He also cuts his toenails and leaves the clippings laying around.  He won't admit to it, but he totally watched every minute of the BBC miniseries, I think it was The Forsyte Saga, with me way back when when Cora was a baby, before he met and married my sister.


Thanks, men, for all you did and do.  We love you and appreciate you very much.

beautiful girl

I was going in the large grocery store doors yesterday and a beautiful young woman was coming out.  we passed each other through the door.  as most gals do i couldn't help noticing her, weighing myself by her standard and found wanting.  she had perfectly highlighted and flat ironed hair.  she was wearing great clothes that i doubt came from her local friendly goodwill.  she had a killer bag that made mine shrink under my arm in shame due to something sticky being spilled in the bottom and the fact that i had a two day old string cheese in there somewhere.  she had a rocking shape that boasted of either daily grueling workouts at the gym or an envious metabolism.  i suddenly remembered that the last time i set foot in a gym was to pick up my daughter from swim practice and i had a mocha with whipped cream in hand at the time.  like most (insecure) women do, i took all this in in the three seconds it took for us to pass one another.  my eyes glanced down at her feet without seeming to do so as i confiscated control of the door and she took it from me.




beautiful high heels of course.  why don't i grocery shop in high heels?


yet.


one was black, the other brown.


the same style.  exactly. 


she must have bought two pairs.  maybe a sale?  maybe just insanely comfortable shoes?


but two distinctly different colors.


and i smiled, but not in a mean-girl way, just in a maybe-we're-all-put-together-with-elmer's-glue-like-our-preschooler's-cut-out-paper-dolls.


and i realized maybe my mom, and your mom, and you when you say it to your kids, are right.  nobody's perfect, child.

Home made Cheezits

Well, these are so good I've pretty much decided that in order to have them everyday of my life, I will beg, borrow, steal, kill, pillage, destroy, maim, etc.   They're that good.  And because I think the world needs more cheesy crackers I am sharing them with you.

Not the actual crackers.  That would involve me sharing.

But the recipe.

Normally, I'd give credit where credit is due, but pretty much every recipe that came up on my midnight google search of "give me homemade Cheezits and no one gets hurt" are all the same.  So I don't know who originally came up with the whole thing, but I would kiss his boots if ever he came to call.

Here you go.  Make em.  You won't be sorry.  You may be fatter, but oh well.  Such is the price we pay for fatty, crisp, bite sized wonderfulness.

Homemade Cheezits Worth Dying For


Pulse in a food processor:
1 cup flour
4 tablespoon cold cut up butter
8 oz grated cheese (sharp is best.  However, I used Colby and have no regrets.  Except for the inhaling and forgetting to chew part.)
3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper


If you don't have a food processor, like yours truly, just use a mixer. Works fine.  Drizzle in cold water until it forms a ball.  Wrap ball in plastic wrap and freeze for 30 minutes.
Roll out between two sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap as thin as you can.  They're good pudgy and soft in the middle (like me) but they're even better super crispy, so thin is the goal (isn't it always? Sigh).  Cut out using one of your four zombie avenger pizza cutters.  Squares are classic but it's really the season for wreaths and trees and snowmen.  Sprinkle with salt.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  Let em finish crisping for a few minutes before you take them off the sheet and snarf them with abandon. 

Marriage

We'd been together a few months here.  Fourteen years ago.

She was shy, insecure, stubborn, probably passively aggressive.
He was blunt, comedic, stubborn, probably aggressively aggressive.

She was short and skinny, broke, artistic.  She was still dancing, but had lost some of the love for it.  She wouldn't order anything to eat, ever, when out with friends causing them to confront her about eating disorders.  She just didn't like the ugly business of choosing something and then chewing and swallowing it in front of anyone.  She drove a two toned beat up car.  She wasn't getting along with her sister.

He was zealous about religion, loud, stressed out about work.  He was performance driven, romantic, funny, but sometimes rude.  He drove a pick up where a lot of kissing took place, especially at red lights.  He didn't like to be alone.

He talked all the time.  She didn't.

He wanted a blonde career woman.

She wanted a boot wearing cowboy.

She wasn't interested in careers.

He wasn't interested in boots.

Sometimes they argued but it was only about big things, not the little things that everyone always says you'll argue about when you get married, like toothbrushes and how to make the coffee and whether or not to have decorative hand towels.

She can't focus in clutter or chaos; it makes her depressed and tumultuous inside.

He will always put dirty spoons on the counter after she's washed it down.

He loves football.

She will always have a martyred look on her face when he watches it.

He likes sugar.

She likes salt.

They learn eventually that looks and expressions say more than words in a marriage.

Once she got so angry at him she threw her set of car keys at his face.
Luckily, she throws like a girl or he'd be wearing an eye patch now.

He likes to talk about his feelings.

She would rather write about them.

He is her biggest fan even when she makes him crazy.

She is his best friend even when he does the wrong thing.

Now they don't argue about the big things anymore because they have all that worked out.  Birth control and vaccinating and home schooling and budgets and travels and moves - all the kinks have been beautifully ironed so that there are never any wrinkles to unfold and discover that inside is a nasty difference of opinion.  Instead they argue now about the dumb little things, like toothbrushes and how to make the coffee and whether or not to have decorative hand towels.

They don't say the wrong things anymore, but since they know what one another is thinking they might as well sometimes.  She mentally curses his eyesight when she picks up his dirty socks from the bedroom floor.  He mentally rolls his eyes when he asks how he can help around the house and the offer only makes her mad.

Their flaws are more evident the older their children grow because it's like being followed around by three miniature looking glasses with milk mustaches and footy pajamas.

He can be insensitive and she can be manipulative, but they are both forgiving.

What about all of you?  What has marriage taught you?

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