Stoking the Fire

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I used to find myself being envious of my cats. I would be leaving for work in the morning after having stayed up too late writing/watching late night TV (I love and miss you, Jimmy Fallon), and there they would be, cuddled on the bed, ready to take a luxurious, uninterrupted, hours-long nap. They have no job to worry about and no bills to pay. They never have to think:

“Hm, what do I want for dinner tonight?”

Yes. Being a well-cared for, domesticated, house cat seemed to have a lot of perks until I realized that much of my life would consist of sleeping and staying in-doors and that I would have to eat the same meal every day for the rest of my life. In fact, all my decisions would be made for me, and I would be vulnerable to my steward’s whim. Then, there’s the whole having to groom oneself and the pooping in a box and the shortened life span.

All of a sudden, it’s not all apple-pie and sunshine in the life of a cat.

Now that I have Jude, I often find myself thinking about how great it is to be a kid. You have no real responsibilities, no job, and no bills. Your whole, big life is ahead of you, and your whole day is centered around playing. You get complimentary chauffeur service everywhere you go. People go out of their way to tell you you’re handsome and smart all the time, and when you get a little cranky, someone comes along and says:

“You really need a nap.”

Then, you are scooped up into loving arms and cuddled until you drift off to sleep with Mickey Mouse under your arm. When you are having a bad day or moment, you can just emote, kicking your legs and acting like a crazed loon, and no one will call the police to have you committed. Instead, they’ll offer you a cookie or try to distract you with something fun.

As far as I can tell, it all seems pretty awesome in the Land of Jude.

Alas, he is not of the same opinion. He is twenty-three months old, and he is under the impression that he is at least ten years older. If he knew the years of toil ahead, he would never want to hurry past these wonder years, but kids never seem to get that concept. So, while I am here pining away for my lost youth, he is calling me to task for all the injustices he suffers at my mighty parental fist.

Jude has quite the list of the activities that he would like to conquer without my help (thankyouverymuch), and it is growing every day. Please note that any impediment to these demands will result in a rage-tantrum lasting anywhere from one to ten minutes. Please also note that 98% of the time, he is a well-behaved, darling little boy with good manners and plenty of kisses for Mom. Please also note that he only has these grievances with Mom and that most other people–including his day-care provider–will say, “Who? Jude? No!” if I even try to broach the subject.

He’s a sly one, my little love.

Here they are, in no particular order, the things that will send Jude into a fury these days:

1. Not being able to sit at the table without a high chair or booster seat (keep in mind that we have a pub-style table and that any table is still well over his head when he’s sitting in a “big boy” chair).
2. Wearing pants.
3. Not being able to take his own shower.
4. Leaving any fun situation, including sitting in the rocking chairs outside of Cracker Barrel. Also, every situation outside of the home should be considered “fun”. (Filed under: “No Mommy’s House! No Mommy’s House!”)
5. Getting into the bath.
6. Getting out of the bath.
7. Getting dried off after the bath.
8. Not liking his pajamas.
9. Not being able to read his own bedtime story. (Also filed under: “Mommy, up!”) NB: I don’t actually mind this demand.
10. Being told he we have to move on to something else and that he can no longer play with: the hair dryer, the flat iron (cooled, of course), the vacuum, etc.
11. Being told that household cleaning agents aren’t toys.
12. Not being asked to help with day-to-day activities like making scrambled eggs, putting cream and sugar in my hot tea, folding the laundry. (Also filed under: “Jude help! Jude help!”)

This is by no means a complete list, but rather, just a taste of the pain and suffering that it is to be a(n) (almost) two year old boy. I wish I could warn him to enjoy this time because it is so fleeting, but he would not understand, and he probably would not take the advice even if he could. So, even though I find myself getting flustered from time to time, I know that I have to hold tight to these moments, too, because they will never pass by here again.

Instead, I choose to admire his independence and his strong-will. It’s a do-it-yourself kind of world, and it cannot hurt to be a little stubborn/focused. And to those terrible-twos that seem racing towards us at full-steam, I take a deep, sturdy breath and say: Bring. It. On.

After all, Jude gets all that fire from his mom.

Pizza Rules (and Regulations)

Last night, Jude and I were treated to dinner with Nonni and Papa (the artists formerly known as Mom and Dan). We also met with two of my parent’s close friends, Michael and Lisa, for some nachos and pizza at a place called The Cabin.

The Cabin has a special on Monday nights where customers who order one pizza get subsequent pies for half-price. We headed to The Cabin because (a) we like their pizza and (b) we all happened to be free on a Monday night. It was not our goal to go for the half-price deal, but it certainly can be a bonus. Well, I guess I should say it would be a bonus–if they didn’t ruin it with so many rules.

I’ll explain.

We have being going to The Cabin for pizza and nachos for years. The nachos have just the right amount of beef and cheese, and the chips themselves are thick, crisp, and delicious. The pizza is a thin crust, and the ratio of cheese to tomato is perfect–not too much of the latter as to be goopy, but not too much of the former as to be heavy. In the past, we have eaten there on a Monday night, and there has not been much of an issue, other than a bit of a wait for a table.

And then, it all went to heck.

Tonight, we waited over an hour for our pizzas. We had great company, but alas, poor Jude was at his breaking point before the food arrived. He is quite used to restaurants and has sat patiently during two and three hour dinners before–even up to a couple of weeks ago when we met with co-workers at a local Italian restaurant for a little ravioli and socializing. But for some reason, perhaps the excitement of being at Nonni’s or the hour wait in between appetizer and main course, he was not in the mood to sit all that time, and I do not blame him. The only reason adults have a higher tolerance for these situations is because we have been conditioned to sit and be patient. If you asked anyone in that restaurant, I bet they would have liked to fidget in their seats and yell out:

“All done! Go go home!!”

One of the other newly instituted rules at The Cabin on half-price night is that the pizzas must be ordered all at once. So, a group cannot decide last minute that the pizzas they ordered will not suffice. Given the new hour wait time, I am not sure anyone would even want to put another order in for an additional pie. It would be a two (plus) hour affair. Okay, so I will not begrudge them that rule. I’m sure the servers want as much turn around as possible, all things considered.

But it’s one of the other rules that stumps me. No matter how much of the remaining pizza is left once everyone is stuffed and (rules aside) happy, customers are only allowed to take two slices home. Not two slices per pie. Two slices, period. Now, I believe the rationale behind this is to prevent people from ordering much more than they can eat with the intention of taking full pizzas home with them. Maybe this has been a problem in the past, but I cannot imagine someone stocking up on a weeks worth of pizza just because it is half-price.

Michael put it best when he said:

“Let me get this straight. We’re talking about pizza, right? You’ve got some dough with some sauce on top and then you’ve got some cheese. That’s it.”

He’s right. It’s pizza, not some kind of expensive cut of meat or other sort of delicacy. Further, I don’t see why it makes more sense to throw out extra food rather than sending it home with the people who (a) paid for it and (b) will probably eat it. Why not say that pizzas may not be ordered “to-go”? It seems to me that this particular rule was made in exasperation as it punishes all for the misdeeds of some, but isn’t that the case with many of the rules we make for ourselves?

What’s worse is that I found myself forcing a second slice last night because I did not want to “waste”. Darn you and your stupid rules, Cabin!

I understand the need for structure and organization in life. I am not advocating for total anarchy. But it just seems silly to make rules about things like pizza. It zaps some of the joy out of sitting around a table with a group of your friends and loved ones and indulging in the all that baked dough-sauce-cheese goodness. And who wants half-priced, joyless pizza, anyway?

How do you like your pizza?

Small, Good Things

A couple of months ago, after my mom gave Jude a trim–she’s his barber, you know–he was bounding around, happy to be free of the scissors and the holding still.

“Look at Jude’s new haircut,” she said to my stepfather who had been sitting in the next room.

“What a nice haircut,” my stepfather said, his voice soft and encouraging.

Nodded and smiled, not fully understanding the question but delighted to receive the adulation.

“Wouldn’t it be great if adults spoke to each other the way they do to children,” said my mom.

I laughed.

“I mean it,” she said.

“What a pretty shirt you are wearing,” I said to her, in that same child-friendly voice, to illustrate the concept.

“Thank you! And I like your sweater so much,” she said in an equally enthusiastic voice.

We laughed, but then she continued:

“Not the high voices, but the flattery. Why don’t we do it?”

I considered it for a moment, then agreed. How different everything would be if we spent our lives giving and receiving affirmations.

Why don’t we do it?

There is a story by my favorite author, Raymond Carver, that I have been thinking about a lot in the last two days. The story, “A Small, Good Thing,” is a revision of an earlier story called “The Bath.” The latter is a disquieting story about a mother and father whose son is hit by a car one day while walking to school and falls into a coma. The story was edited by Gordon Lish, pared down to fit the hallmarks of Carver’s signature, minimalist (or as he would say, precisionist) style. A couple of years later, in his sobriety, Carver re-imagined the story into the former version, giving it less of an ambiguous ending, and turning it away from something sinister and unsettling to something hopeful and warm.

In particular, I love the new ending of the story, and the concept that the baker–though he was suffering himself–could find a way to connect with the heartbroken parents and to share with them something small, good and sustaining in their moment of crisis.

I like the idea of sharing goodness with other people, of trying to lift the pain of others with our own small kindnesses, and as these thoughts have been on my mind even more than usual this week, I figured it was an opportune time to talk about it here.

(Spoiler alert: If you are interested in reading “A Small, Good Thing” in its entirety, do not read ahead as the quote below is taken from the ending of the story.)

Excerpt, “A Small, Good Thing” (source):

“It was warm inside the bakery. Howard stood up from the table and took off his coat. He helped Ann from her coat. The baker looked at them for a minute and then nodded and got up from the table. He went to the oven and turned off some switches. He found cups and poured coffee from an electric coffee-maker. He put a carton of cream on the table, and a bowl of sugar.

‘You probably need to eat something,’ the baker said. ‘I hope you’ll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,’ he said.

He served them warm cinnamon rolls just out of the oven, the icing still runny. He put butter on the table and knives to spread the butter. Then the baker sat down at the table with them. He waited. He waited until they each took a roll from the platter and began to eat. ‘It’s good to eat something,’ he said, watching them. ‘There’s more. Eat up. Eat all you want. There’s all the rolls in the world in here.’

They ate rolls and drank coffee. Ann was suddenly hungry, and the rolls were warm and sweet. She ate three of them, which pleased the baker. Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he’d worked over.

Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning. He had a necessary trade. He was a baker. He was glad he wasn’t a florist. It was better to be feeding people. This was a better smell anytime than flowers.

‘Smell this,’ the baker said, breaking open a dark loaf. ‘It’s a heavy bread, but rich.’ They smelled it, then he had them taste it. It had the taste of molasses and coarse grains. They listened to him. They ate what they could. They swallowed the dark bread. It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light. They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving.”

***

I try to notice them everywhere, those small, good things that people offer in the way of kindness:

• The guy behind the counter at STS Tires who went way out of his way to be polite, helpful and downright friendly the morning after I got a flat tire in the city
• Or, the server at our local pizza shop who went out of her way to treat Jude and I like VIPs, even though our bill came to only $7.90
• Or even, the flowers my mom bought me when I was sick and stuck in the house two weekends ago

Much more so than those temporary moments of frustration/disappointment/irritation at the hands of the thoughtless and insensitive, those fleeting moments of generosity and benevolence will linger long and well in my heart.

What sort of small kindnesses have you recently experienced? How did they change your day/mind/attitude?

In Boston

Boston is one of my most favorite cities. I visited there for a conference in 2003, and I fell in love with everything about it. I loved wandering through the streets of the Back Bay, wandering past the buildings, through the alleyways, into the shops and the restaurants. There is just something about the place that attaches to the heart and the imagination.

source

On my second to last day there, a guy ran up to me on the street–he was doing roadwork with a bunch of other men and made a gaffe, causing a lot of cursing from his team and a lot of laughing from me.

“Do I know you?” he said. He was Irish, and his accent was as charming as his smile.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

He asked me if I was a college student, and I told him I wasn’t, though it was flattering to be mistaken for one. We talked for a few moments, about my first visit to the city and other random things. Then, all of a sudden, he kissed me, right there on the street, like it was no big deal.

I was stunned.

It was sweet and unforgettable. Though we exchanged phone numbers, we did not end up talking until a couple of years later. I saw him again during another trip to Boston, but then never again after that. Alas, it was not meant to be.

I have visited the city four times since the first one, and on each occasion, I fell deeper in love with the place. I have since explored well beyond the Back Bay, and I look forward to going back again and again to discover more. Moving there–if even for a month–is on my life’s to do list.

Hearing about the explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterday filled me with profound sadness, both for the city I love and for the people who suffered physically and emotionally. It was a beautiful day in Boston, one where a group of runners along with friends, loved ones, other spectators, and first responders converged for something extraordinary and powerful. That a single person or group of people took it upon him/themselves to try and destroy all that enthusiasm and love and community is difficult to process and impossible to understand.

Life is hard enough. I will never understand why there are people in the world who want to make things even worse for anybody else. We should try to hold one another up rather than use our energies to take whatever little people have away from them. People deserve to be happy, and I do not see the point in getting in the way of those pursuits.

Maybe if we keep focusing on the good–on the people who rushed into the cloud of smoke to help those who were injured and afraid, on the people who opened those homes to marathoners who were displaced, on the small stories of courage and strength–then we can remember that there is so much kindness and love in this world. The goodwill of others far outweighs the hate of some, and it always will.

There is not much that can be said or done to bring comfort right now, I know, but my thoughts and my heart are in Boston just the same.

The Best Kind of Sandwich

This week in the Northeast, the weather went from not-quite-spring to full-on-summer for a couple of days. So of course, my mind went straight to the place it always does when the mercury rises:

ice cream.

The other day when I picked Jude up from school, he kept repeating “ice cream, ice cream.” He was too young last year to remember the frequency with which we consumed the sweet treat, but I listened to his demands nonetheless and picked up a gallon of peanut butter swirl and some mini-ice cream sandwiches. Jude was so excited that he wanted to hold the latter for the rest of our grocery store jaunt.

I could not wait to delight him with the magic of the ice cream sandwiches once the dinner dishes were cleared. After all, I knew those would be easiest and would create the least amount of mess, AND of all the sandwiches a person could eat, the ice cream variety is one of the very best. So, once he was finished with his chicken and rice, I unwrapped the chocolate and vanilla dessert and placed it before him on the high chair tray.

My favorite thing to do is to hold the brown cakes firmly with my fingertips, letting them sink into place until the very last bite. And then, after the last bit is devoured, I love removing the remaining chocolatey goodness that remains. In fact, the more I have stuck to my fingers at the end of the process, the better the ice cream sandwich eating experience.

I look forward to the day when I can share my secret with Jude in a way he will understand, but for now, it is fun to watch the sheer joy on his face as he consumes the frozen deliciousness. I see a lot of ice cream eating in our futures, and I could not be happier about it.

Bring it on, summer. Bring. It. On.

What is your favorite summer-time treat?

A Time to Shop

Once again, I am joining Nicole from JUST LIVE IT! for her Bloggers Like Us Challenge. This time around, she has asked her readers to post a picture that best captures our enthusiasm for spring.

I must admit that when I hear the word spring, the things that come to mind first—besides the sunny days—are the clothes/shoes. Yep, it is that time of year where I cast aside my cardigans and boots and ask myself:

“Did I really wear the same shirt/flip-flops for an entire season last year?!”

It is difficult to believe that I was still on maternity leave this time last April, so the answer to the above question is most likely a big, fat: YES.

Also, I seem to have a well-stocked winter wardrobe, but for some reason, I am never satisfied with my warm weather clothes. So, even though I cannot wait to pull out a few favorites, when I get an inkling that spring is in the air, it is time to shop!

Though you will find my trusty Havaianas in the photo below, I have also included three new, colorful tops, which I hope will add some much needed ka-pow to my closet.

What do you love most about spring?

Who’s Afraid of Allergy Season?

Since I can remember, I have suffered with chronic headaches.

In fact, I do not recall a day of my life when I woke up without a headache. The pain does not last all day long everyday, but often, it does make a reappearance now and again later in the afternoon or at night–or both. I have tried many, many remedies and have seen many, many doctors, but there does not seem to be any sort of solution.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this on the blog before, and I am not doing it now as a “poor me” type of confession. Rather, I have accepted it as a fact of my life.

Exceeeeept when it comes to this time of year.

Even though April is still brand new, my seasonal allergies are settled in and attacking with swift aggression. Now, I am the sort of person who needs allergy medicine year-round, but when it comes to spring, I find myself miserable with itchy eyes, a stuffed nose, and throbbing headaches. It is not uncommon for me to fall asleep early with an ice pack on my forehead once the blooms arrive.

When I was not a mom, it was easy for me to come home from work and take a nap during my high-allergy days. Now, it just is not a possibility. And I have been in dire need off an alternative.

One afternoon, while discussing the problem with one of my cubicle-mates, she told me that she had a similar problem with her allergies and suggested a neti pot. She swears by it. I heard of this method before, but it always sounded kind of new-agey and weird. I couldn’t get past the “pour water in your nose” concept. However, I was feeling desperate, and since I have been through child-birth, I figured a little nasal irrigation should be no big thang.

So, I purchased one that day on my way home from work–along with distilled water because you cannot talk about the neti pot without SOMEONE saying:

“Don’t use tap water! You’ll get brain parasites!”

I decided to wait until I was alone in the bathroom before using my pot. I spread out the directions and followed them meticulously, finding myself leaning over the sink holding a little, plastic saline-and-water filled pot up to my nose. And then: strangeness.

A neti pot does not hurt like I worried it might. The worst part about it is the mental freakout that happens in your brain when the water pours up one side of your nose and out the other. Your impulse is to try to suck air in, but that just results in some bad news. To combat the awkward feeling, I found myself opening my mouth and reminding myself to breath through it. That first time, I could not make it through the whole pot, but when I did come up for air, I was surprised at how refreshed I felt.

It was working.

And it only took me three days to read the rest of the directions and figure out that I needed to repeat the process on the other side.

Ugh.

Though my headaches are not gone completely, the neti pot has been an amazing help to what is ordinarily an unbearable time of year. Yes, I still feel so very tired, but I cannot tell if it’s from (a) stress, (b) allergies, or (c) parenthood.

So, if someone could just invent the all-natural, anti-exhaustion pot, I’d be all set.

Do you have spring allergies? How do you cope?