Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Today is the Bean's 6th birthday. He is bigger every year and it is amazing and cause to celebrate the hell out of him, but there it is. He's in the middle, sandwiched between two paragons of where-the-hell-did-my-life-go insanity, more of a road marker of my age than a brick wall. Poor man has a burden and part of it is my inattention--I lost a year and a half of his life which means he really should only be turning 4 today. While the Sprout was sucking my life force the Bean kept growing, changing, evolving, but I wasn't present to witness it so when I look back on pictures of those 18 months, roughly half of the pregnancy and a goodly part of the Sprout's first year, I don't remember being there with him. I remember being there with Sprout, trying like hell to burn memories of him into my brain so I could recall all the sweetness of the last baby later. I remember being there with Peanut because...well, because Peanut has always been good at demanding attention. God help me, I remember the big and the little but the middle somehow leaked away. I've tried so hard to be here for my people, to be present and real and HERE, but sometimes I just wasn't. I could have tried harder. The Bean suffered. We've spent the last several months unraveling the trauma that having a baby caused him to suffer and my heart breaks for him when he gets in trouble at school because his needs aren't being met and he doesn't know how to communicate his disappointment without yelling or hitting. Things are better. Things are good now, I've got my brain back and it's helpful. My Bean is 6 today and he is beautiful and loved.

christ almighty

Oh, my good lands. I need something to do. Getting weepy over a bread recipe on a Saturday night is absolutely not how I want to spend the remaining months of my twenties. And how it is, exactly, that I'm going to be turning 30 this summer? HOW ON EARTH DID THIS HAPPEN? HOW WAS THIS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN? WHO SIGNED OFF ON THIS? IT'S BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT I TELL YOU!

Ahem. Excuse me. It's just that...seriously, where the fuck did the last ten years go? I imagine this is an interior monologue that every 29-and-a-half-year-old has but that doesn't make it any less devastating for me. I've had this horrible feeling lately that I've accomplished absolutely NOTHING in my life that I can look back on and be proud about.

I do have three kids, though. And, you know, they're pretty cute. They have behaviour problems and one of them still poops in his pants but they all sleep in their own beds 75 percent of the time.

Fuck. I totally thought I'd be a washed up rock star by now with drug problems and crabs, or the youngest, hottest winner of the Nobel prize for literature and/or general bad-assedness. I should have had my own Food Network show where I'd make fun of Emeril Lagasse and Jaime Oliver would come by and he'd totally flirt with me, but then so would Anthony Bourdain but I'd tell him to go fuck himself cause he could, like, be MY DAD and I'm totally not into that. Unless we were talking about, like, David Bowie or something. That might be ok. I was totally obsessed with Labyrinth when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure it was the tight pants that had me captivated.

Someone did remind me the other day that I could have spent my twenties doing drugs and that what I've done in the past decade will actually have some value going forward and I'm like, yo. You know the name of someone who will buy my babies? Two out of three are blonde. I think they'd fetch a pretty penny based on looks alone.

I know it's going to be ok. I'm probably not going to cure cancer or racism and I'll probably never be this generations Hemmingway nor will I probably ever visit all the places I'd like to. I might end up old and bitter about it, or I could get run over by a car before I even see 30, leaving dreams and disappointments to the rest of you suckers. Who knows. Today, I'm just cranky.

making bread at night

Since moving to this house, our priorities and lifestyle have changed. We had always talked about having a kitchen garden, but I, at least, had never really gardened and didn't know anything at all about the work involved in cultivating a successful patch of land that brought forth food. We had planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in wine barrels, stuck in sunny spots on the driveway or along the side of the house in other living situations and I felt like nothing but a frustrated gardener: "Give me some dirt! All I want is a small patch of earth that I can run my fingers through and coax life from." Well, we got it. We've got almost half an acre under us and although only a small part of that is devoted entirely to food and of that most lies fallow in the winter, the work is ever present. Only in the dead of January is there not a weekend when we ought to be doing something in the garden.

This is what I have learned: gardening for me is full of "oughts". If I'm not presently doing something I ought to be doing I have guilt and when I'm at a task I find more enjoyable than another I wonder if I really ought to be doing that one instead of this one I find myself doing and if I've just completely worked hard all day at the height of summer than I'm sure to have missed something I ought to have done and tomorrow will be too late. Today, thank heavens, it is raining because I ought to be working at what defined my day yesterday: weeding. Between weeding and grocery shopping, little else got done yesterday, which is why, at 10 pm last night, I was waiting for my bread to do its second proofing so I could bake the damn thing already. Finally, it was ready--over ready, in fact. I had gotten lost in Kelsey's Brother Juniper bread book and a fine gin and tonic and slice of Della Fattoria semolina bread. This is what 10 pm looked like at my house last night:

The bread (Oat Bran Bread, from the monk's bread book) was delicious. Absolutely wonderful. I cut the recipe in half because it was my first time with this one and I didn't want two loaves of sub-par bread but next time I'll definitely make the full two.

I was so absorbed in the chapter about Struan that tears came to my eyes (may have had something to do with the G&T. It was...strong) and I decided to cook some brown rice for the bread-and-chocolate recipe which uses Struan as the base (I'll update upon completion of that project) but my loaf rose precariously over the brim of the loaf pan. Kelsey has had this book since the dawn of time but I had never thought to use its recipes because, truthfully, the Brother Juniper bread I used to buy at the store was always a little on the dry side. This loaf, however, completely won me over. It's beautiful. It's delicious. It's light enough for the kids to enjoy it and has enough oat and wheat bran for Kelsey and I to acknowledge its goodness.

Oh, my GOD, I know, my oven is awful and disgusting, but this is the only picture I had the presence of mind to take of this glorious loaf.

aligned

This morning, at 4:37, Peanut began a puking marathon that would not let up until noon. The retching was fast and furious, as was the pile of laundry accumulating on the floor of the garage in front of the washing machine. I myself have not slept for some days now, due in large part to a stomach flu that took out my two stalwart school-age children last week and a nasty fever that has afflicted the toddler since Sunday. The feverish tot thrashes in bed next to me in his sleep and between the thrashing and my trying, largely unsuccessfully, to keep his hand out of his pants in order to keep pee off of my sheets, I have not slept. Last night was better-- the fever lower, thrashing lessened, no other children under duress-- until 4:37 when the vomiting began. When it was finally time to get up and get the Bean, my only (seemingly) healthy child, to kindergarten I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed (to the sound of retching) and poured a bowl of cold cereal for the lucky one who got to leave this den of sickness and unwashed pukey sheets.

At 8:15 I put my Peanut in front of the television and instructed her to call for me when Important Looking People started talking.

Last week husband and I discussed keeping the kids home to watch the inauguration. Mostly, I brought it up and he proceeded to tell me why my idea was bad and all of his points were valid:
The children don't cover this stuff at school yet
The speeches were likely to be longer than their attention spans
The fact that our president is a black man doesn't really need to mean anything to them, yet. Someday, yes, it will be important, but today they don't need to know what a dark and mean place this country can be. Today, this is a place where a little girl close to my own girl's age gets to wear a pretty dress and stand with her Grandma, her Mama, her sister and her Daddy in front of more than a million people who are standing outside in the freezing cold to wish them all luck and let them know that they love them. It's a day when a beautiful woman wears a sparkly gold coat (seriously, I know it's lemongrass eyelet, but on tv, through glassy eyes, it looked sparkly. Maybe it was just because it was Michelle) and her husband maybe flubs his lines a little bit, but it doesn't really matter because today is a special day. It's a gold coat day. It's a staying home in bed sick day. It's a watching tv day and seeing history day. It's a watching your mom cry while she's listening to our new President, shushing the baby and holding your hair back while you vomit day.

It's a new day. And it'll be a new tomorrow.

Crackin' nuts in Frisco

I am taking my daughter, older son and both of my parents to the Nutcracker tomorrow. Shhh. They think they're taking me. Ha ha! joke's on them!

Ok, not really. I'll be sandwiched in the backseat of the Toyota between brother and sister while my dad drives us down to the city. I imagine it might still be fun. I hope to take some pictures of the kids in their snazzy city outfits and then I hope to fix my Picasa and then I hope to post some new pictures.

I'm excited (!) (almost squee! excited) about mah boy seein' the Nutcracker for the first time. His sister's been prepping him for nigh on three years now, and now that he's five (house rules) he can experience the fantasticness that is the San Francisco Ballet in person. I think he mostly wants to go because the toy soldier army fires a cannon at the mouse king. I could be wrong.

Really not all that bad. Maybe even good.

Wow. That was....really lame. I'm sorry. Note to self: no half-drunk blogging after bad news from the dentist.

Instead, we will think of eggnog, mistletoe and holly berries. Christmas trees, Playmobil nativity sets and open fires. We will read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Polar Express and The Gift of the Magi. We will listen to sentimental Christmas songs at night with only the tree lights on and we will warm our toes by the fire and we will remember the first Christmas we spent together as a couple and then as a family. So many Christmases and each one different but defined by the things that are the same. The first Christmas we spent together we were living in a small apartment and we saw no need to buy a tree for ourselves. A few days before Christmas I broke down and fashioned the ugliest tree ever out of an upside down tomato cage and hung it with tinsel and ornaments. We tacked our two stockings to the wall above the heater. I got a bottle of vodka in my stocking. Now, Christmas officially begins when the kids demand the Playmobil nativity set the weekend after Thanksgiving and ends the day after Christmas when I can't take the clutter any more and begin putting all the decorations and ornaments away.

Last year, I decided that I would skip Christmas this year altogether. We just wouldn't do it. None of it. I was so disgusted and stressed out and unhappy in the weeks leading up to Christmas that I just couldn't see the joy in it anymore and figured that we would just avoid it in the future, like the plague or the mall. But here it is again and there's no running away from it. Might as well enjoy it.

I see a lot of spiked eggnog in the coming weeks.

Merry Fucking Christmas to you too, Great Depression of ought-8

Man, but it's been hard.

When it was just US watching our own budget things seemed dire enough but now with, oh, you know EVERYONE watching their economy as well as the nation's and planet's spiral ever downward things seem even worse. We've been trying to buckle down for the last year or so since our own finances went topsy-turvey and I've got to tell you--there's nothing more depressing than fantasizing about the swanky cocktail party of your dreams, you know, the one where you're wearing that vintage frock you fit into ages ago, updated with some fine Louboutins (what? just me?) passing out nibblets of chorizo-stuffed dates wrapped with prosciutto while your husband--outfitted in natty slacks and cashmere cardigan (omg! with a pipe!) shakes you and your guests a dirty martini (although, really, probably more of a Sidecar. Yum.) while in reality you're trying to decide if your 5 year old really need his cavities filled or if you can replace some of the draughty windows instead or maybe buy some firewood because the heater's broken. Poor kid. His teeth hurt. On the other hand, fillings only benefit him, while warmth benefits us all.

It will be interesting, this next little while. If not the dust bowl, then what? The closing of Detroit? Where will they go? Mexico? Canada? Will they come to California again? Will the mothers of dead babies breastfeed grown men?

How can we have let this happen? And how can I stop the draughts around my doors? How do we keep the cold out?

Merry Christmas, baby. All I need is what I've got, right here with me. I will snuggle my babies for warmth and feed my chickens and grow my garden and take care of what I have because that's all I have. It's enough. It's perfect.