food reading

I received a fascinating email today from a co-worker with images from Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel. If you haven't seen it, some of the images from this email can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5005952

Apparently, this story ran in November of 2005, so I'm more than a little behind on my reading.

P and I were most interested in--but not surprised by--the amount of processed foods found on the American photo, especially compared to the other countries.

I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a few months back, which was an inspiring read. So I'll have to add Hungry Planet to my to-read list for this summer, in addition to In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, which I recently discovered but have not yet read. Any other recommendations for my food reading list?

yoga, please

j has taken to grabbing my hand and demanding “yoga, please!” at least seven times a day. We have a routine: first, I stretch out into child’s pose and he runs around me. Then, he demands that I get into cow pose, then cat pose, and then cow pose again so he can climb on top and bounce up and down. Then I do the pose pictured here, only imagine it without the wall, pillow under the back, and cloth over the eyes. And add a giggling two-and-a-half-year-old balanced on top of my feet.

No, this is not the kind of yoga you’d get at a local class, and I wouldn't exactly call it relaxing. But it’s pretty fun for both of us, and it really seems to calm j down at the end of a long hard day at pre-school.

feminist for obama

This post will not be about why I support Barack Obama for president, but rather, why I (and other feminists) should be "allowed" to do so. Though it's a couple months old now, I found this article interesting:

Anti-Hillary Sentiment On The Rise Among Leading Feminists

I especially like this quote:

Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," and Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia, declared that the pro-Clinton feminists "interrogate, chastise, second-guess and even denounce those who escape their encampment and find themselves on Obama terrain. In their hands feminism, like patriotism, is the all-encompassing prism that eliminates discussion, doubt and difference about whom to vote for and why."

I would be happy if either Clinton or Obama were elected; I think both are good candidates. And I am disgusted by the often deplorably sexist treatment of Senator Clinton. But it angers me when I am told I'm "not a good feminist" because I support Obama, as if feminism is this monolithic thing that requires I vote for the female candidate. (That's why in general I prefer "feminism(s)" rather than "feminism," but mainstream media outlets don't have the time, I suppose, to detail all the different kinds of feminisms that exist: radical, Marxist, poststructural, etc.)

Here's the original Ensler/Crenshaw post:

Feminist Ultimatums: Not In Our Name

The feminism we fought so hard for and benefited from was not to make us blind to the complexity, but to help us see beyond simple formulas and body politics.

Ok: now I really need to get back to doing some work.

family portrait

This was my attempt to depict our family. Though it may be hard to believe, it took me a mere 2 minutes to draw (that's pretty much all I have before baby-j wrests the crayons away from me). You'd think that P would have taken such time constraints into consideration when evaluating my work, but no. He took issue with the pointy-ness of the goatee, the curliness of the hair, and the accuracy of the eyes. "Are you criticizing my art?" I asked. "I just question the realism of your interpretation," he replied.

He did make me and baby-j the most fantastic after-school, pre-dissertation-defense snacks last week. I just got the pictures off my camera.

Here's mine:


And here's baby-j's:

defending

Well, the defense is over, and it went well--much better than I thought it would! I had a wonderful committee; all members had helpful and positive feedback on my dissertation.

I have tried to imagine what it would be feel like to be done with the defense after so many years in school. I thought I would feel ecstatic, running up and down the streets, wanting to jump out of my skin. Instead, I feel somewhat numb. It just hasn’t really sunk in yet that--once I hand in the final copy with the minor revisions I need to do--it is over. I’ll be interested to see how I feel once it does sink in.

cars, kitchens, and cousins

Lots of changes going on in the last few weeks. Even with the changes and being completely stressed out about next Friday, I feel like we’re getting back to some sort of normalcy after the craziness of the last four months. First, we got a car to replace P’s dad’s car, which has served us well over the past three and a half years... however, the cost of work we’d have to do to keep it running was enough to justify getting a new car.

I took a picture of the Probe before it went away to its resting place, which I imagine is filled with grassy fields and flowers and other Ford Probes with which this one can romp.

*lighting a memorial candle*



Also, our kitchen is done. Well, almost. P has been touching it up here and there, leaving the paint cans in the pantry in case the urge for a touch-up strikes. Though we’ve had several contractors in here over the last month (cabinets, floor, counters, etc.), he’s been painting and nailing crap into walls and doing various other odds and ends. As usual, he rocks. His shoes are big ones to fill.



We have a calendar of the cousins on our fridge. baby-j enjoys admiring it. And speaking in duck and frog.

a date

Well, I submitted my dissertation to the four members of my committee this morning.

And I have a date now for the dissertation defense: Friday, April 18. That is less than three weeks from now.

Excuse me while I go hyperventilate.

easter

I am trying to finish my final dissertaton revisions this week, so allow me to let some recent pictures do the updating around here.

weird Easter photo of my dying tulips:


baby-j searching for eggs:


baby-j getting some direction:


a satisfied baby-j after finding eggs:


and finally, baby-j eating his last breakfast with the old kitchen floor:


That's it for now. More writing to come when I'm not writing.

spring longing

I got these tulips at our local store; they're shown here in the newly painted (thanks to P) kitchen.

We got a chance to get outside this past weekend and do a little bit (a VERY little bit) of yardwork. I trimmed the two enormous bushes next to the entrance of the house since they were hanging over the walk and making it difficult to walk past them. Then I cleared a path underneath and between the two bushes so it would be just big enough for a certain two-and-a-half-year-old to run through and use as a hiding spot.

can you dig that?

Just so I don't forget baby-j's latest poem, I want to get it down here. It is--of course!--accompanied by lots of foot stomping and circling around the room.

Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?
Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?
Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?

(repeat for several minutes)

kitchen update

Ok, so I suck at blending photos together. But here's an update of what the kitchen looks like now, several days after it was demolished. We're still in progress, as you can see, but at least we don't have appliances and boxes of cabinets in our living room. We are waiting on a floor, countertops, some paint, and a sink. The sink is really crucial, since we're still operating out of the bathroom sink. In case you didn't know, there are many, many problems with the bathroom and the kitchen being in the same room.

I don't think I ever explained why we are getting a new kitchen (and why we knew we'd get a new kitchen when we decided to buy the house). I mean, really, the kitchen didn't look too bad before. Well, it's all about the oven. It was tiny--really tiny. So tiny that I couldn't fit a cookie sheet in there. We'd had an oven like it before, when P and I first moved in together and lived in an itsy bitsy 300 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan. It took him something like 18 hours to cook a Thanksgiving turkey in there since you couldn't close the oven door with the pan inside. So we decided that we had to have a regular-sized oven, which mean pulling out at least the surrounding cabinets in order to fit, and if you do that, you kind of want the upper cabinets to match, and then, well... you know how it goes. You start out small, and pretty soon you find yourself in the bathroom kitchen, making coffee above a potty seat and removing the Band-Aids so you have space on the shelf for the peanut butter.

kitchen redux ‘08

The past two weeks have been busy. P took a 5-day conference trip to Kansas City, after which he flew home, spent an hour here at home to pack again, and we all drove to Michigan for his grandmother’s funeral.

So I could blog about how sad we are (we are), how rough the drive was (it was), how sick we are (we are), how high baby-j’s temperature was earlier today (way too high), and how much coughing we’ve all done (too much). However, I’d prefer to write about the other crazy thing going on: kitchen redux ’08. The day after we returned form Michigan, the cabinets were delivered, and this afternoon, the contractors demolished our kitchen.

This is what the kitchen looked like this morning:

And this is what it looks like this evening:

Since we won’t have a kitchen for more than 3 weeks, we needed somewhere to prepare baby-j’s lunches (P) and to make coffee (me). It’s a good thing the bathroom has a bit of counter space: P and I devised the “kitchen annex,” which is located both in the bathroom (yes, that's a toddler potty under the coffee maker)...

...and in the bedroom...


So come along--won’t you?--and let me bore you with tales of demolition, discoveries of 1960s artifacts in the walls, and futile attempts to stop baby-j from entering the construction zone. I think it’s a much better subject for blogging than all the stress, illness, and gloom that has been hovering over this family for the last few months.

a new 'do

Even though baby-j has been follicly challenged for much of his 30 months here, the hair has grown pretty rapidly over the last few months. In the last few weeks, I've surreptitiously hacked off some patches here and there, usually while he was running away from me. However, it's started looking a little like... well, like his mom had hacked off a few patches here and there while he was running away from her. So today we headed to the local salon in town to chop some of it off until it comes in thick enough that he can grow the nice, long hippy hair of which P and I dream.

It went surprisingly well, and it looks decent enough. He was relatively calm as I held his hands down, probably because he was distracted by his reflection in the mirror. The stylist couldn't get the trimmer anywhere near him before he starting squealing and trying to jump down from the chair, so we all decided to keep the experience a good one and try the trimmer again next time.

Oh, and that's our new fridge in the background. We are renovating our 1970s kitchen one piece at a time. Until we get the cabinets and the contractors in here, we'll continue to have this stove, dishwasher, and microwave in our living room with nowhere to go. The stove in the living room is currently holding some plants, a table lamp, and some baby wipes.

ten years

A decade ago, Jared the Subway dude finished losing all that weight. If you’ve passed a Subway shop anytime in the past month, you know this already.

A decade ago, I was in my first year of graduate school. Pleasegodletthisbethelast.

A decade ago (tonight! February 22!), P and I went on our first date. Though we met in the 1980s during our adolescent years, we got back in touch after P spotted me walking down an NYC street with some friends. In a speech my father gave at our wedding, he said that P and I met when I was “walking the street in New York City”--which is true enough, I suppose, but it had just enough of a hooker vibe that it has been (and will be) repeated often. Case in point: when I reminded P that it's been 10 years, his first words were “oh, yeah... the day you were ‘walking the street.’”

Today was a snow day for all three of us, and we were treated to a reprisal of baby-j eating snow and screaming to be let into the car. When he’s a teenager, I’ll have to remind him how much he disliked being snowed in and how he desperately wanted to go to school.

Anyway, I got some pictures of the morning. It felt good to do this again, snapping away as both my husband and son refused to smile and rolled their eyes at me. I haven’t done this in a month--far too long.

Here’s a tree so enormous I can’t believe it fits in our yard.

Here’s baby-j snacking on snow. Overheard: “Tasty!”


Here’s baby-j in the car with nowhere to go. After 20 minutes, P finally pulled him out.

And finally, a creepy-looking picture of another tree in our yard:

niceties

It’s been forever since I last blogged (has it really been almost a month?), but I promise to be better. I’ve written a bit, but have been waiting until I have some less depressing things to post. And so, we turn to baby-j: this is a picture I took a few weeks ago of him in a relaxing reading spot.

baby-j is getting to be an expert at saying “please” and “thank you,” though we’re still working on understanding what they mean. This is probably my fault. I prompt his politeness when he asks for something (like “Waaah-tuhr!”) by saying,

“What do you say?”
“Please!” he yelps.
“Thank you,” I prompt as I hand him what he desires.
“Thank you,” he mimics.

Now, I don’t need to prompt him. He’s taken to saying the following when he wants something:

“What you say? Please. Thank you. What you say? Please. Thank you. What you say? Please. Thank you. What you say? Please. Thank you.”

...all before I can even grab what he wants.

absence

At work, I keep getting asked how I’m doing. Well, I’m still here, though what “here” means is always different, of course. Last weekend we moved into our new place with the much-appreciated help of my mom, brother, and sister-in-law. At this point we’ve unpacked enough to function--probably more than many people would expect us to have done considering we’ve been here a week, but then, we’ve had practice.

I have a chiropractor appointment on Monday with the chiropractor I went to somewhat regularly before we moved to Pennsylvania. I was thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve seen her: four years. That may seem long, but then I thought about what I’ve done since then: 3 different apartments, 2 different houses, 1 baby. It feels like a lifetime ago. And even though I know I’m supposed to be happy about our new house (which *is* wonderful, by the way), I cannot seem to stop feeling sad.

Of course I’m sad: I’m mourning my father. But the new house is making me feel kind of lost, more so than any of our other moves. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I think it has something to do with feeling incredibly disconnected from my dad. When P and I went back to clean the apartment and hand back the keys this week, I felt a pang... not because of the apartment itself, for which I had no strong feelings, but because it was a place where my father was. I’m pretty sure the last time he was there was when he put together the tricycle my folks got for baby-j. He wasn’t there much. But he was there, not here in this new space. He will never be in this house.

In the last couple years, my father worked a lot. He had irregular hours and irregular days, and he often had to work on weekends, so when we got together with my folks, it was often just with my mom. He wasn’t there for many of the trips there or the trips here, and so when I try to comfort myself by thinking of the last few years with him, I’m frustrated. In this way, his death has created sort of an absence of absence, and that thought is so horrible, I try to push it down each time it surfaces.

my dad

My father died last week. Even though he'd been in the hospital for a few weeks, his death was unexpected. He went in voluntarily on December 30 because he had difficulty breathing. He had a range of health issues that the doctors couldn't quite get a handle on, even after he was helicoptered to a better-equipped university hospital last Wednesday. They think he'd had chronic lung disease and had also gotten a recent infection. Add that to diabetes and heart disease, and ultimately, his heart and lung complications were just too much. We all (my dad included) did not realize how serious it was until the last few days. I am grateful, though, that his immediate family made it to the hospital in time and he passed peacefully with all of us there. 15 minutes of his heart slowing to a stop, and we were all in the room. I will never be able to forget that moment.

I’m assuming that the day he died--Friday, January 11, or 1/11--will be a date that I will always remember. Is it a common thing, to remember the date of a loved one’s death? I’ve also been doing calculations since he died... weird, inane calculations, like I spoke to my dad for the last time 4 days before he died, or, upon seeing the impressive ages of centenarians on the Today show, that man got to live 43 years longer than my dad. Not fair. And the numbers keep coming. My dad lived for 60 years and 27 days. My dad died 4 minutes before 9:00pm.

His death and funeral have been a heart-wrenching experiences, ones that I cannot quite put into words, though I hope to do so in the next few months, whether here or privately. On some level, it will probably be good for me to do so, but I just can’t do it all right now. I was so thankful that I got to see and hear from so many good friends and family over the last week. For those who read here, thank you all so much. I am so grateful to have you all in my life.

man for me (ode to barack)

I've had this song on my MP3 player for a few weeks now; it's the leading song on my "mama/baby-j dance playlist." And now, it's a YouTube video. The singer is a friend of a friend, and I'm interested to see if it gets any press coverage. Enjoy!

more moving

Here's an example of the kind of moving boxes we have stacked around the apartment. You know you’ve moved too much in the last few years when you can’t even figure out what's in the box you just packed.

We moved half of our things--the “easy” half--last week. It was about 20 degrees the day we moved, which was great for P. He didn’t sweat too much, and the temperature seemed to enable him to move quickly. I think the cold was numbing. Definitely something to keep in mind the next time we move--oh, wait. We are never moving again. Ever.

This week, P and I will move the rest, including all the furniture. Fun times, especially if I’m as good as I was last time at helping him move the gigantic couch up and down stairs. I’m strong enough to do it, but I don’t really have a mover’s instinct.

My dad is still in the hospital, still trying to recover enough from the pneumonia so they can do surgery. I’m worried that he cannot seem to get enough oxygen despite assistance. He cannot speak for more than a few minutes before getting winded, which is a pretty scary thing. However, P and I went to visit him yesterday and he looked much better than he did a few days ago. It seems that this will be a very slow recovery.

obama's victory speech

Though I missed it on TV, I found it online just now.

It's a very good night:



“...we are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America and in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again.”