childbearing hipster

Go. Now. Go.

So, My So-Called Life is now available to watch on Hulu.

I didn't really watch it the first time around. Here's a funny story about that: my sister's friend Jaime used to work where I worked, and she's a couple years younger than I am, and one day she asked me if I watched MSCL the previous night, and I was like (and this kills me now, what a snot I was) "Um, no, because I'm a grownup. I watched Friends". All these years later, that sounds absolutely hilarious and horrible. At the time it made perfect sense, because, god, I was far too mature to watch a show about high school.

Of course the truth is that the show would have killed me to watch. I was only a few years out of high school myself, it was too soon, the wounds of those years were too fresh, and frankly, the show is too real. Someday my kids will ask me what it was like when I was a teenager and I might as well just point them to the collector's edition DVD set, because there was nothing that happened on MSCL that didn't happen in my actual high school life. Those kids dressed like I dressed, talked like I talked, moped like I moped, and had voiceovers in their head, just like I had. Watching a couple of episodes for the first time a few years after it originally aired, I was non-stop cringe and cry. I couldn't actually watch the entire series. It was still too soon, wounds too fresh, high school too real.

Yesterday I watched a couple of episodes while folding laundry, and it still hits hard, but in a different spot: this time, it was the parents who made me cringe. Oh, the kids still resonate. But now, instead of being totally focused on those kids and how they were my exact past, I couldn't stop watching the parents and understanding that they are my exact future (minus, one hopes, the bad haircuts and incredible Mom jeans). And so again, I can't actually watch the series. It's just too real, and the future's close enough as it is.

Happy Birthday To Me (Tomorrow)

These are the birthday cupcakes I made myself. I'm obsessed with lemon cake and coconut, so that's what we've got here: lemon cupcakes, frosted with coconut buttercream and topped with toasted shredded coconut. I tasted one when nobody was looking: they're killer. Try them for yourself:

Lemon Cake

Someday I'm going to try making a cake from scratch, maybe. Until then, this is a trick I learned from someone else and adapted to my lemony desires. If you are scratch-cake averse, fool your friends and amaze your family with this one:

First, get you one box of lemon cake mix

Bake as box indicates, but substitute the equivalent amount of butter for oil and whole milk for water. Also add the juice and zest of two lemons. There you go. Lemon cake.

Coconut Buttercream

Beat one softened stick of butter, three cups of powdered sugar, and a teaspoon or so of coconut extract, drizzling in milk or cream a tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency. All done.

Twenty-Five Things

There's this meme going around on Facebook--if you're on Facebook, you've undoubtedly seen it--where you list twenty-five random facts about yourself and then "tag" twenty-five of your friends to do the same.

I've been ignoring it for a week but now it's to the point where at least twenty-five people have tagged me and I feel like that's a sign of something. And signs aren't to be ignored, so I'm going to try to think of twenty-five little gems of information about myself or my family, and get myself off the hook.

1. I've known Dug since I was 18. We didn't think much of one another back then.

2. Our entire relationship was made possible by technology. IM let us keep in contact all day at work, mobile phones with free long distance let us talk all evening. Cheap airfare let us see each other on the weekends. We dated pretty much like normal people for several months while living 800 miles apart.

3. When I was a really little kid, four or five at the oldest, my mom taught me how to walk with an encyclopedia on my head. She said it was to teach me good posture and that it's how models, whatever they were, learned to walk. Thirty years later I can walk up and down stairs, sit and stand, turn and come back, for an almost unsettlingly long time all without the book slipping. To date, nobody has asked me to model.

4. There are very few foods that I've tried that I really dislike, and I'm very open to trying anything once. That willingness has led me to the knowledge that sea urchin tastes just like it looks (baby poop), but whelk, on the other hand, tastes like heaven. Not like crusty booger at all! You just don't know unless you try things.

5. Over the years I've been trying to learn to like foods that I've never cared for. I'm almost there with both melon and olives--before, with both, I couldn't even pick them out of something and then eat it for most of my life. Now I can do that fine, plus I'm starting to appreciate them on their own. So if I get stuck on a deserted island whose main sources of food are cantaloupe and Kalamatas, I'm golden.

6. I admit it: I'm really disappointed that neither of the kids have red hair, STILL. Which is ridiculous, because I hated my hair as a kid--hated how conspicuous it was, how adults cooed over it while kids mocked it. Basically all I wanted to be when I grew up was a brunette.

7. Funnily enough, brown is the only color I've never dyed my hair.

8. What I *really* wanted to be when I grew up was a fashion designer. And then I fell into the "doctor/lawyer" trap and never got out. Now I understand that I wasn't ever doctor/lawyer brainy and that I should have been encouraged to sit under trees and draw all I wanted, but back then who knew anything about anything? I was encouraged to grow up and be something that made a lot of money.

9. I did not grow up to be anything that made a lot of money. I did make a decent amount of money for a while, but that was purely by accident. Or rather, purely based on chutzpah. What can I say, there was a booming economy back then. Companies had "vice presidents of fun", for pete's sake. Charm could take you very far in the 1990s.

10. Lately I've been thinking about the future a lot, which by the way is not as bright in the post-VP-of-Fun years. What could I be that is creative, flexible, and brings in more money than it costs? Nothing's come to mind yet.

11. DID YOU KNOW? that I am a big Star Wars geek? The kind who says things like "Well, that's not really canon, it was only in the comics". The prequels made me hate George Lucas so hard. So hard that I sometimes look at Skywalker Ranch on Google Earth and plot my revenge.

12. The kids got American Girl dolls for Christmas because I wanted one so bad. I'm not the least bit ashamed of it, either.

13. Another doll-related thing I'm not ashamed of: I played with my Barbies practically until high school. Toward the end it was less pretend play, more "I wonder if I can dress ten Barbies up to represent the ten decades of the 20th century?" type thing. But still, undeniably playing with Barbies at fourteen.

14. I miss my nosering.

15. I wear aprons when I cook. I've probably got a dozen or so, mostly vintage. I rotate through them.

16. I don't listen to the same music I liked when I was younger. Or rather, the bands I loved the most just don't resonate with me anymore, and some of them even sound embarrassingly bad (sorry, Depeche Mode, but it's true, your lyrics in hindsight are as bad as the poetry they inspired me to write at the time).

17. I have a kayak, and my own ski equipment. It puzzles me, but I've got the stuff, all right.

18. Cars Dug and I have had since we've been together: late 80's Acura, '00 Mustang, '66 Mustang, '71 VW Squareback, '68 and '74 BMW (and a couple of parts cars for those), '03 Jetta, '05 Element, '86 VW Cabriolet, '06 Odyssey, and '70 Ford pickup. Also three motorcycles and a travel trailer. And I'm probably forgetting one. We should really get to use some kind of special "high volume" window at the DMV.

19. Bikes are the new car at our house. See that list above? Now just imagine instead of numbers and the make of a car, it says "purple bike, red bike, free bike, garage sale bike" and ends with a dot-dot-dot because it's obvious the bike onslaught is never going to end.

20. I pretty much eat chips and salsa every day, at least a little bit.

21. I make my own cleaning supplies. It's mostly that I got sad about all the plastic bottles. It's also about my penchant for pretty smelly things in nice packaging, and recognizing this as an area in which I can decrease consumption and marketing influence (Fuck you, Mrs. Meyers!).

Also, and this is important: it lets me go around saying "I make my own cleaning supplies".

22. I dye my eyelashes. I do it myself with contraband imported dye that I order online. I still wear mascara on the top ones for thickening purposes.

23. You know what? I don't really like to go out. There, I've said it. I'm usually okay once I am out, but I don't like the going out part. I pretty much dread the whole thing until I walk into the door of wherever I'm supposed to be. This is why I almost never inititate "girls' night out". Because I don't want to go. Until I'm there. Then it's fine.

24. The first time I ever got drunk was with my friend Carrie, on screwdrivers, which we drank out of plastic Thundercats cups. We were fifteen or so, and we danced around outside singing in the street in front of my house. Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

25. I would have liked to have named one of the girls after my sister, but her name doesn't go with our last name, and by that I mean, it really would have sounded stupid. Local anchorperson stupid. I hope the thought counts, at least.

Um, Om.

Last weekend I joined a gym. Although for one reason and another I was thwarted from actually going to the gym, until this morning when I went to my first studio yoga class in I can't remember how long.

I was all nervous and flustered because even though I practice pretty regularly at home, I don't think of myself as a real yogini because I don't have a studio practice, and I probably have a million bad habits to break. And I rode my bike, so there was a kind of flurry of looking for the bike lock and then trying to figure out how to carry all my crap and then realizing I was going to be late and feeling guilty for even thinking about just saying "fuck it" and driving the mile and a half to the gym, and then riding a little too fast and building up too much of a sweat and getting all jittery.

I did get there in time (you should always be early for yoga), although it was still hard to find a spot and I was all sweaty and thirsty instead of calm and centered.

I wasn't sure what to expect, because I've never been to a yoga class at a gym. I was kind of thinking it might be more Power Yoga oriented, where it was more about achieving a yoga butt than about achieving nirvana. I was kind of pleasantly surprised when the class turned out to have a full RDA of woo-woo. In fact, it almost didn't have enough focus on my butt, but that's okay, that's what the rest of the gym is for. I appreciated the emphasis on props, which I don't use nearly enough, because I think props help you remember that the point of yoga is not to win, it's to do it correctly. I used props to modify poses I do much more deeply at home, and I'm glad I did, because otherwise I'd have wasted a lot of mojo showing off that I would have needed for other parts of the class.

One thing that bugged the shit out of me was that people kept arriving after she had rung the bells to begin the session. Barring the door to latecomers is something I always appreciated in a studio because it's so fucking distracting to be trying to find your breath while people are shuffling around, having to move your mat to accommodate them when you want to be preparing your mind. But then again, I realized, part of practicing yoga with other people is...other people. If I can work through my practice with Daisy's helpful presence, I can learn to ignore the interruptions of strangers. Harder to ignore though, was the woman who stepped on my mat and that of my neighbor when she walked by on her way to get a strap. Who the fuck walks on someone else's mat? Breathe in peace, breathe out wanting to beat this woman to death with her own bolster. Next time, arrive earlier, try to find a lower-traffic spot in the room.

I had a bit of a breakthrough moment, staring at my belly during a shoulderstand, wondering if it would be weird to wear Spanx under my yoga pants (another thing you never worry about in a home practice: whether anyone can see your flaws the way you can). Anyway, what I realized was that I'd been in shoulderstand for a good five plus minutes without a waver, so really, who gives a shit about some belly flab? All in good time. Also, it occurs to me now that I didn't pay any attention at all to anyone in the room who wasn't either leading the class or stomping all over my mat, with the exception of observing some variations here and there.

In Savasana, I pretended I was floating on my back in water. It worked really well, but not long enough. I have a friend who just cannot handle what she calls the "naptime" part of yoga, and I am afraid I'm with her. I love the beginning, but it really just goes on too long. Eventually my brain refuses to believe that I'm really floating, then it somehow gets the message to my body, then all I want to do is wiggle and sigh with boredom. I skip naptime at home. 

Then I rode my bike home in the rain, cussing.

Me, Fit

During the whole moving debacle--actually, during the whole last year of uncertainty and financial instability--I somehow ate (and lets face it, drank) my way to gaining fifteen or twenty pounds. It's mostly in my ass, and since I wear a lot of dresses, it might not be as noticeable to other people as it is to me. But there's a box full of jeans in the basement that I can't fit into right now.

So now that we're where we are and staying there, I've got no excuses. So once again I'm attempting to turn myself into a person who exercises.

I pondered joining a local gym but the other times in my life that I've belonged to a gym, I learned that paying money for something is not enough to encourage me to use it. Every month, thirty bucks would piss its way out of my account, and I'd just go on my merry way.

Ah, but the Wii Fit. I bought one on Craigslist right after they came out. I played with it a little bit and then ignored it for a while. I dusted it off and made it my new motivator.

Every morning I get up, run through some kind of vigorous workout from one of the DVDs I own, or one that I've checked out from the library. Then I hook up the Wii, add my progress to the system, let it graph my vital stats, and maybe play a couple of the fitness games (I'm very partial to Super Hula Hoop, but I also like the jogging game, wherein you shove the Wiimote down your pants and run around the living room like a giant doofus).

I took Sunday off last weekend, but when Wii Fit chided me on Monday for skipping a day, I felt bad enough about it that I might not do that again. I have found my motivator, and it is being shamed or praised by a machine. Brave New World, indeed.

I'm only two weeks into my new regime, so I am nowhere near unpacking the skinny pants. But I already discovered a new muscle on the back of my leg, and I feel taller, somehow. And I actually look forward to that chunk of my morning, which is not usually how I feel about things that don't involve being on the couch.

School starts soon, and that means daily walks or bike rides back and forth between two different schools. Wii Fit's gonna be so proud of me.

It's like he could read my mind

On the way to the OB/GYN to get my Mirena installed (Hurray! Five years of no babies and maybe, as a bonus, no periods!), I stopped at Peet's coffee to treat myself to a frothy beverage.

I thank the guy who hands me my drink and he smiles and says "Stay out of trouble!"

You betcha.

(and now, I'm going to take to my bed and enjoy the privilege that mild cramping bestows)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Dinner: New York Strips à la Dug, potato-cauliflower Dauphinois à la Jamie Oliver (less nutmeg next time, it was a tad noggy, but still delish) and sautéed Bright Lights chard with lemon.

Also, homemade strawberry ice cream.

Oh, we could have gone out, but that meal would have cost us forty bucks a head not counting booze, and when I eat, I always count the booze. I can't see a thing wrong with making my own birthday dinner.

During dinner I leaned over a couple times to crank the ice cream maker, and it occurred to Molly that "You can make anything by yourself if you just have the ingredients, you don't have to go out and buy it already made".

Wait till I bust out the pasta maker. It's going to blow her mind.

Merci, Grandmère

I think about my paternal grandmother constantly.

She passed away about a decade ago, but she is a perpetual living presence. She was French, from Lyon, the culinary capital. So I think of her whenever I cook, remembering her excellent food, knowing I get a little of my love of food from her. I think of her when I spray on perfume, or attempt to do something jaunty with a scarf (I fail, frequently, at that last one).

But mostly I think of her as I stand under the bright lights of the bathroom, every morning and every night, leaning close to the mirror with tweezers in my hand, and every time I pick up my razor with a sigh and get down to business.

Perhaps my lovely French grandmother was descended from the cave-dwellers of Lascaux. It's hard to know for sure. But there is no doubting her greatest legacy: my shining, glossy pelt of Mediterranean hair.

My sister's got it too, but at least she also got the inch-long inky-black eyelashes. Our mother is of British Isles stock, and gets magically less hairy every year. But I, on the other hand, know that it is definitely spring when it becomes apparent that I am wearing angora Bermuda shorts. Oh good, time to shave above the knee.

I don't do waxing, because it's expensive and for me, pointless. It's cheaper and more efficient to shave and to pluck. And shave. And pluck. And shave and pluck again. Summer is my evil nemesis, and my retro aesthetic isn't the only reason I gravitate toward skirted, boy-shorted bathing suits.

Every morning I peer into the mirror and pluck the stray brow hairs and the random other hairs that pop up on my jawline...that one funny one smack in the wrinkle next to my mouth...the ones that sometimes magically appear on my neck. Every night, I do the same thing. There is always something to pluck.  There is a small patch on my chin so vigorous that I think of it, in my mind, as the Simone Aimée Collet Memorial Whiskers.

There are certainly other things I inherited from my grandmother--my misanthropy, my sarcasm, my appreciation for existentialist literature, my taste for cheap wine (with or without ice cubes), my complete and utter lack of breasts. But above all, the hair. That thick, fast-growing, wonderful hair of mine.

With great eyebrows, comes great responsibilty

Makin' Bacon

I'm braindropping a few times a week over at Parentricity, and you're welcome to check it out.

I still work and stuff.

Check out my compare-and-contrast (hey there, AP English Teachers!) between Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious and Missy Chase Lapine's The Sneaky Chef, over at Babble.com.

Now, longtime friends and readers know I've had some pain and heartache with Miss Molly and her White Food Only (But Not Potatoes Unless They're French Fried) rule, and I've always tried to follow the eminently practical advice of the great Ellyn Satter: your role as a parent is to provide good food in wide variety, the child's role is to choose which foods they will actually eat. And you may know that it's been really difficult for me to stick to that, but I'm still really not comfortable with the food-hiding concept. On the other hand, these books do include some inspirational ways to twist old favorites (that French toast of Seinfeld's is outstanding, you'd make it for a fancy brunch) and they stand as a reminder that you can beef up the nutritional content of almost anything without compromising on taste and texture.

Now, tonight I made mashed potatoes with nothing hidden in them but garlic (Molly: "What is wrong with these mashed potatoes?") and brussels sprouts without bacon, which is anathema in this house (Daisy: "I cannot eat this!") and chicken (with bacon, everybody was fine with the chicken). I have learned nothing from my hard work. If my kids don't wake up with rickets, it's not because of me.