In Which, a search is organdised for to find mummy's mind

I know you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of it here, but we've been busy around these parts. Busy trying not to die of Swine Flu, that is. Oh my holy hell, the last two weeks were but hard. Bean was thrown under the wheels of the fever bus first and then Peanut, Sprout and the Baby Daddy were quickly next. Miraculously I was spared the same fate because lo, the heavens parted and the gods themselves were witness to all the fucking fevered brow wiping and snot wrangling and temperature taking that I was doing up in here and decided, hey, you know what? We won't give her the dread Hamthrax. Instead, in all of our beneficent glory, we will bestow upon the stalwart female one a cold that will last nigh until the end of days and for that she will thank us because she will not be sick enough to lay down and let the others stew in their own filth but neither will she be well enough to be able to find her own ass with two hands and she will know humility and fatigue and will stand in awe of our generosity.

And then finally everyone got better. Even me. I know, right?

Now, one unfortunate side effect of having three kids and the third being the sickest is that I kind of let behaviour that I would not tolerate under any other circumstances fly. It started with little things like staying up late because he'd napped all day and fixing a gajillion different things for him to eat because he'd gone for days without really eating anything and he's on the skinny side anyway. Basically, what I'm saying, is that we started with a pretty well adjusted three year old and at the end of two weeks we now have a monster. There's no pretty way to say that. He's been hanging out in his pajamas for two weeks becoming more and more demanding but it's not only this, oh no. His penis fixation is reaching epic proportions. Anyway, this all culminated yesterday in Whole Foods where half of well heeled humanity was doing their Thanksgiving shopping when I denied Sprout some basic pleasure like, I don't remember, chocolate maybe or, really, anything, and he pulled his penis out of his pants and yelled "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! PENIS! FUCK!"

And then my head exploded, the end.

the future, it is bright

Mommy, is this how you spell "Forchunstand"?

Yes. That is how you spell Fortune Stand. It's not the correct spelling, but I know that it says Fortune Stand.

Now the spelling mishap has been cleared up and Peanut is giving Funny Forchunds to Sprout: "You will go to two kids and the kids will say 'You'll be so strong you'll pitch horseshoes without taking them off the horse.'"

Now she's concocting a Funny Forchund for me.

I can't wait.

we can't all of us be happy all of the time

Tonight we'll be eating split pea soup. I may need to apologise about this to one or more people this evening when the contents of the dinner pot are made clear but it just IS a split pea soup day. When I opened the cupboards this morning the first thing I looked for were split peas. Finding none, I grabbed the sad little bag of leftover Rio Zape beans from last winter and proceeded to look for the delicious Carne en su jugo recipe on the Rancho Gordo website. I should say that my beans are actually from Tierra Farms who has a farm stand just down the street and who sells delicious produce and beans with which I have made Rancho Gordo's carne en su jugo.

Delicious.

But I didn't have enough time to make the meat and bean soup and anyway, what I really wanted was split pea soup. 30 Whole Foods dollars later (I also had to buy milk and beer, both necessities.) I am standing in a kitchen that smells intoxicatingly of, well, peas. It's an earthy, legumey, slightly muddy and warm smell that would be made better only by the addition of a ham hock, which was left out in this instance due to, well, lack of ham hock. It's a smell I remember from my childhood and adolescence and young adult-hood. We would sometimes make huge pots of split pea soup at work and the smell, while hardly forceful, nonetheless made itself known throughout the restaurant and the day. I love a house that smells like bread baking or chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven, but I feel at home when the kitchen is steamy with split peas.

And then there's the color. I've always been drawn to it, especially flecked with orange carrots and black pepper, but the green itself if beautiful. It's not grey and it's not bright but it's the nubbly green of a knitted blanket that's perhaps a little tattered around the edges and has had all the newness worn off long ago but is the one you always pull out of the closet to wrap around yourself on a cold evening with warm tea and a book.

Tomorrow night I'll make pasta with Santi's sausages and homemade marinara Kelsey lovingly put up during the summer and everyone will be sated and happy, including myself. But some nights you simply have to cook for yourself and on those nights, isn't it nice if it's something as easy as split pea soup.

do not walk freely

So, and I know you cannot tell this from the picture but this motherfucker is HUGELY HUGEMONGOUS and could probably eat a fucking BUICK if you put him up to it, I am completely terrified of walking in my backyard now. Just knowing that spiders like this lurk in North America sends shivers down my spine. Kelsey found him in the zucchini plants the other day and we've been feeding him soldier flies--and what dumb fuckers they are. Holy shit, the maggots are huge and nasty looking and then they turn into wasp-like flies but they just bumble about a bit and then die--one of which he's wrapping up in this picture, by the way, as a means of scale.

I've named him Bruce.

I now walk down any path in our yard with a stick out in front of me waving madly about from side to side and up and down lest any spiderweb grace my shirtfront and any other Bruces out there incur the wrath that is Emily Being Stuck In A Huge Ginormous Garden Spider Web, complete with screaming and slapping at anything even a little bit sticky or crawly.

Chorizo stew THAT WAS NOT FAIL

Somehow, possibly because I'm fantastically depressed, I managed to FAIL to take a picture of the meal we ate this evening. My failure may have been due in part to the tongue thrashing I got from my dearest beloved for using all the chorizo he bought at the farmer's market in my chickpea-and-chorizo stew. But you know what? I stand by it. I'll stand by my stew until the end of days because my LANDS was it tasty. Here's how it went:

Sweat 2 onions, coursely chopped, in olive oil
add 4 cloves of garlic, sliced and
2 carrots in a large dice

let cook until the onions are translucent and golden

add 1 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika,
3 cups tomato sauce or puree (I happened to be cooking tomato sauce for canning and used 3 cups of this)
21/2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1 cup water
chorizo

Let cook for...until it smells really good and before the chorizo has completely fallen apart.

IN THE MEANTIME...

torch a couple of sweet peppers...gypsy peppers worked really well for this
peel and slice thinly

at the very end, when everything else is done and you've even
chopped parsley

poach one egg per serving.

Into the bowl:
stew
peppers
egg
parsley
grey salt
pepper

RAVISH

the end. Enjoy! We did, even if the chorizo was meant for another pot...

inspired by these two lovelies.

after school comestibles.

cold, leftover roasted potato + green sauce = perfect afternoon snack.

side note: must be eaten in a standing position, preferable at the counter.

why I am a failure, Part 1 in a neverending series

It's raining outside. I sent my children to school without rain gear.
I went grocery shopping but I think I only got enough food for the next day or two.
I've had two cups of coffee already but I think I'm going to need more.
I'm going to be 30 next month.
I haven't made my bed yet.
Even though I went grocery shopping, I'm not sure what we're having for dinner tonight.
I'm reading a book I hate but can't put down because at least the 30-something who wrote it managed to DO something with her life.
I tried on expensive jeans the other day in an effort to feel less empty inside.
I haven't made bread in more than 2 weeks.
My house is always dirty.
I think I might smell bad.
I'm secretly fat.

PHEW, it felt good to get that off my chest. I started this post by making a list of things that I had not yet accomplished even though I will be turning the creaky and constipated age of 30 next month, but the list was so disgustingly long and pathetic I erased the whole thing and decided to focus on a narrower topic: what I have or have not done to make myself feel like a failure TODAY.

BUT! On the plus side! On the Oh, Right, That's What Makes Life Worth Living side! Sprout has been singing "Ring of Fire": "I fell into a burning ring of fire I went down down down but the flames went higher and it burns burns burns the ring of fire the ring of fire." Over and over and over. It's fucking awesome.