End of Year Musings Week 1
Posted: December 16, 2011 Filed under: blogging, Day-to-Day, family, friends, kids, parenting | Tags: End of Year meme, Thinkit Leave a commentEvery year, I try to do one of these daily wrap-up memes, though I have to admit that I have some trouble keeping up. I’m more of a brewer than a spewer, so let’s see if I can catch up here to the people working with thinkit.com.
Week 1
Thursday, Dec 1: Favorite Photo
Have a snapshot that encapsulates your year? Or one that represents a great moment? Maybe it just looks dang cool. Show ‘n tell time — let’s see those pics!
We did a lot of family traveling this year, and just generally had a good time together. In this photo, I am at Universal Studios, Florida drinking Frozen Butterbeer in Hogsmeade Village. This is also the year that I discovered the pleasures of Harry Potter, both in a literary and cinematic sense, and I have Edison to thank for that. Drinking Butterbeer – that was a great moment.
- Butterbeer may just be the most delicious thing I have ever imbibed. If you go there, think not of calories, but experience.
Friday, Dec 2: Favorite Music
You know SmallBox likes the rock. We can’t resist asking about your album of the year. Why did it grab you?
Hmm. Hate to say it, but my musical taste pretty much died with Kurt Cobain. This year, I listened to a lot of Green Day (the last two albums) and Weezer, but I still like my Elvis Costello and Aretha Franklin.
Saturday, Dec 3: Favorite Read
What did you read this year that inspired you? Share your favorite book or article.
Wow. That’s hard to say because I read some good books this year. I loved State of Wonder by Anne Patchett, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. As far as inspiration goes, I know that while I was listening to The Marriage Plot, I felt my own voice more strongly then. I don’t know if it was the rhythm of Eugenides’ prose or what, but it really pushed me in a positive way.
Sunday, Dec 4: Favorite Meal
Did you eat something this year that knocked your socks off? Maybe you tried something new that’s now a fave. Describe those tasty morsels.
Another good question that’s hard to answer. My favorite restaurant is in Margate, NJ, which is south of Atlantic City (in fact, if you look at your Monopoly board, and you see Marvin Gardens — that’s actually in Margate.) Anyway, my favorite restaurant is Tomatoes. They have a crab pasta that’s awesome. It’s more crab than pasta, just chunks and chunks of sauteed-in-garlic-and-olive-oil white crab meat. Good stuff.
Also, anything my father makes, is just to die for as well. He also makes a kind of crab pasta that’s really good, and sometimes he does the same thing with shrimp that makes me wish I were more like a cow — you know, like I had four stomachs
Lucy is a building shaped like an elephant built in 1881. She's right off the beach in Margate.
to put the stuff in. It’s heavenly. He will spend an unbelievable amount of time preparing meals for us as well. He preps his food so lovingly. In fact, I have seen him wash a piece of lettuce and then carefully dry it with a paper towel like it’s a newborn baby.
Anyway, this scampi he makes has little bits of carrot that he slices into small, paper-thin squares. He puts a little clam juice in there too. It’s just the best stuff on the planet.
Monday, Dec 5: Events
What event stood out for you this year? Where was it? Who was there? What did it look like?
I didn’t actually attend any notable events that I can think of right away. In terms of current events, we spent a lot of time in our house talking about natural disasters. Clooney was obsessed with news from the tsunami in Japan, and was thrilled (as well as freaked out) to be in the path of Hurricane Irene, which forced us to cut short our week at the beach.
Tuesday, Dec 6: Community
Where do you go where everyone knows your name?
Everywhere I go.
Wednesday, Dec 7: Neighborhood
Tell a neighborhood story. Did you meet someone new? Run into an old friend? Find a hidden spot you love?
I have made a few new friends in the neighborhood this year, which is cool. Clooney’s got a new bus stop and I really like the ladies who gather there to drop off/pick up their offspring. I have quite a few stories, I guess, and we have had some laughs there in all kinds of weather. I wrote about one of the days here: Random Notes.
Recently I made one of the ladies laugh, and that laughter still rings in my ears for some reason. I don’t know, maybe she didn’t expect me to say what I said, but her laugh just burst out of her in a really delightful way.
It started out with a compliment about her boots. They were really cool knee-high numbers, and she had calves that were just right for the fit. “Yeah,” I said, “I just don’t have the calves for knee-high boots. If I wore boots like that, my head would turn blue.”
I don’t know, that just tickled her funny bone for some reason. And it was a beautiful thing.
Wizard of Oz Party
Posted: September 10, 2011 Filed under: family, Food, kids, parenting | Tags: baking, cake, cake decorating, Wizard of Oz party Leave a commentMy daughter turned six last week, and she wanted to have a Wizard of Oz themed party. For her cake, I decided to do a rainbow layered thing. The idea was to make it shaped like a house, and have the Wicked Witch of the East’s legs sticking out from under it.
A few days before making the cake, I used gum paste to make the legs. I added some food coloring to make the shoes, and then I rolled those in colored sugar to make them sparkle.
I also used the gum paste to make the door and windows for the house. For the bottom layer of the cake, I used a 13×9″ pan, and one box of chocolate cake mix. Then, I used two boxes of yellow cake to make the house part. I wanted to do six layers, one for each color of the rainbow, so I divided the batter by six — and it came out to about 1 and a third cups each.
Purple was in the oven when I took this photo.
I used an 8×8 pan to make the layers for the house.
I don’t really like fondant cakes, so I don’t work with fondant. First of all, I don’t think fondant is all that tasty, but also, like I have said in the past, I don’t claim to be any kind of Martha Stewart. I don’t believe all cakes were made to look professional. They should look homemade. If anything, you should want your professionally made cakes to look like they’re homemade so that all of your party guests will think you spent all day toiling in the kitchen. That’s the mark of a good hostess.
Anyway, fully assembled and iced:
Then I went to get my daughter from school, and I guess I had assembled it too quickly, because when I got home, the whole back side had slid off:
But no, worries, just more frosting, and I kept this side against the wall:
Inside the cake:
Other touches included a green punch made of ginger ale, pineapple juice and sherbet. I put a witch’s hat over the punch bowl, so that it had looked like the witch had melted there. The punch was just okay. I mean, who even drinks punch anymore? Isn’t punch sort of a thing from a bygone era…like aspic?
I also had potato sticks to represent the Scarecrow’s straw, and a bowl full of animal crackers (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) The cowardly lion didn’t have much representation here, but I had silver-colored plates and napkins in honor of the Tin Man, and we also had a “Pin the Heart on the Tin Man” game.
Last, but not least, were the goodie bags, done in the color of those magical shoes. Inside there were bubbles (like those of Glenda the Good Witch) and (Manfrengensen’s idea) munchkins from Dunkin Donuts.
It was a fun party, and we all had a good time. Though by the end of the evening, I was glad to be able to put my feet up after everyone realized that there was no place like home.
Random Notes from the First Week of School
Posted: September 10, 2011 Filed under: Day-to-Day, family, kids, parenting | Tags: Inidan culture, jokes, seven ate nine 1 CommentWaiting at the bus stop with other parents, one woman remarked on the toe rings of an Indian woman who was also sending her kids on the bus. The Indian woman explained that the rings were put there by her husband at their wedding, which we suburban American housewives found fascinating.. And then she did the coolest thing: she told us about herself. 
I’m not the kind of person who pries into the lives of others, so I’ve never had the stones to ask an immigrant what it’s like for them. And the crazy thing is that I am curious, but I don’t want to bother them.
Anyway, she told us about the toe rings, and how she never takes them off. And she also explained that the diamond stud in her left nostril was put there by her mother when she came of age. It was a symbol to the community that she was a woman. (I told her that the symbol for me was standing in line at the drug store buying maxi-pads. I think I like her culture better.)
“People in my office think I am some kind of hipster, that I am so cool,” she said, “but I am really just a conservative Indian woman.”
And then she looked wistfully at her 10-year-old daughter and shrugged her shoulders. “But that’s just me. It is not the way for her.”
I don’t know, it was just a beautiful moment in my otherwise waterlogged week.
I really like Indian culture too. I do think she’s a hipster! I wish I could wear a sari without looking like I’m making some bold fashion statement. The way Indian women dress is something I find incredibly beautiful. It’s so much better than the way American women dress with our sexuality on display. Indian women dress in a feminine style that means something…something other than check out these ta-tas — and it’s absolutely timeless. I’ll tell you what — there are no Indian Winx, and that’s a good thing.
Speaking of culture clashes, ever since Edison was in second grade, he has loved the following joke: Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine. Get it? He finds that hilarious after all these years. We all have that kind of joke, don’t we? For me it’s that I have a dentist appointment at tooth-hurty. He he he.
Anyway, Edison started taking Spanish this week, and over dinner, he told us that the joke doesn’t work in Spanish because “siete ocho nueve!” Ha ha ha. (He added the ha’s in a deep voice.)
Siete ocho nueve.
An uninterrupted night of sleep would be nice
Posted: July 27, 2011 Filed under: Day-to-Day, family, kids, parenting | Tags: Harry Potter Summer Camp, sick kids, sleep walking, Smurfs 1 CommentTwo nights ago, I heard someone come bumping down the hall around 1 am. When I opened my eyes, Clooney was standing on Manfrengensen’s side of the bed, and he was hunched over, kind of holding his stomach. My first thought was a panicked one, fearing a night like Krakatoa. He mumbled some gibberish, so I asked him to repeat it, but he couldn’t form his words.
“I want…” he tried to say.
“What?” I asked. “What do you want? Do you feel sick?”
He shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and then said, “I don’t want to see the Smurfs movie.”
Then he turned on his heel and went back to bed.
Okay then.
Last night, it was the Princess’s turn. When I picked her up from a playdate yesterday, she said that she had a headache, and then it turned out that she had a slight fever as well. At 4:30, she woke me up, and while I was lying down with her, she got really chatty, almost deliriously so, going on and on about her field trip to the aquarium almost two months ago; how she touched a starfish, how she saw a swordfish, guys in the shark tank wearing scuba gear, even a detailed description of a stuffed polar bear in the gift shop. By the time I got back to my bed the clock read 5:33 am.
And then, I got up at 7 to take Edison to Harry Potter Camp, which is about 45 minutes away. I have never been much of a commuter, so it’s a big deal. Roughly I am in the car three to three and a half hours each day this week, but he’s enjoying it immensely. It would be nice if we had some floo powder or he could apparate, but such is the real world of us Muggles.
When he got out of the car yesterday morning, we exchanged a moment that just made my heart feel light. You know that look, when you know there’s love there? Like the look you give your newborn child, a back-and-forth feeling of bonding that is increasingly rare as they grow up, and especially around the time when they hit puberty? It was powerful. I was on air all day from that moment.
Yesterday he had a potions class.They duel with spells, go for walks in the “Forbidden Forest”, and yesterday they met a unicorn (a pony with an ice cream cone on its head). Friday there will be a Quidditch tournament. Overall, it sounds like the staff is really creative, and it’s taking place at this school that has kind of Gothic architecture. He’s surrounded by other faithful fans like himself, and he’s having the time of his life. So for that, I can do this drive. For him.
Harry Potter Quidditch Cake Pops (The Golden Snitch)
Posted: July 18, 2011 Filed under: family, Food, kids | Tags: cake, Cake Pops, Food, Gryffendor cookies, Harry Potter, Quidditch Leave a commentThis summer Edison celebrated his eleventh birthday with a Harry-Potter-themed party. For dessert, I made these awesome cake pops:
Inside they were devil’s food.
They were quite easy to make, and I learned how to do it from the Wilton Cake site. Basically, if you can make a meatball, then you can make a cake pop. It’s a bit messy, but it works out in the end. After I had chilled the cake balls for 2 hours, I inserted the sticks and dipped them in white chocolate Wilton Candy Melts. I also used the candy melts and a squeeze bottle to pipe out the wings on a piece of wax paper. Once the candy shell was dried, (which only took a minute or two) I spray painted the outside with Duff’s Graffiti which is like edible spray paint. I had tried to use gold flakes and gold sugar in some test batches, but the Graffiti really did the trick. It was almost like I had airbrushed the things.
When the gold was dry, I melted a little more chocolate and used that to attach the wings, which were really delicate. I made lots of extra ones to account for breakage.
And then in the goodie boxes, I included these chocolate frogs:
And those were just melted milk chocolate that I put in a mold.
And these Gryffendor cookies by my friend at snack:
Hyppogryph Pee (aka lemonade), Dragon Blood (fruit punch) and Unicorn Blood (blue raspberry Kool-Aid)
The kids all wore robes, Manfrengensen wore Dumbledore’s hat all day and spoke with the old man’s tone. The kids played a version of Quidditch in the yard that was probably closer to Capture the Flag. We also had a dragon’s egg hunt and a “Care of Magical Creatures” event that was really a three-legged race, since Edison likes to keep the action moving. A good time was had by all!
NYC Vacation with the kids
Posted: July 15, 2011 Filed under: family, kids, parenting, Travel | Tags: family vacation, July, kids, NYC Leave a comment
photo by Bruce Davidson
Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairiest of them all?
Posted: June 28, 2011 Filed under: Entertainment, family, kids, Media, parenting, television, TV | Tags: Disney, fairies, nickelodeon, tramps 2 CommentsWhat’s with Nickelodeon’s new line of fairies, Winx? These fairies are even trashier looking than the Disney Tinkerbell ones! Their French-maid length skirts barely cover 
their high, tight hineys, and they’re wearing knee socks over their knees. Unlike the Tinkerbell fairies of the garden variety, these are like trampy hooker fairies. I would not be at all surprised if it were revealed that one of these fairies had made a sex tape. 
They make the cartoons of my youth seem so tame in comparison. I mean, Winx make Josie of Josie and the Pussycats look like Meryl Streep in Doubt.
And of course, The Princess knows all about this new show and has been anxiously awaiting its debut. I need that noise like I need another kid.
I’ll tell you what — the way this summer’s been going, I’m about this close to becoming a screen-free household. But then, where would we be really? The 19th century? What good will that do them?
And sure, I can turn off this show, and forbid it in the household. I can tell her no when she sees the merchandise and wants it. But, I’m just so tired of the fight. We say we want to raise our girls to be strong and independent like boys, but then these are the images they get from the media? (This and Dora, taking them to ice cream fountains and candy mountains, feeding chocolate chip cookies to bugs, etc. Hey girls, would you rather be anorexic or diabetic? It’s one or the other!) There’s just no way around it, not in the twenty-first century.
Seriously though, I cannot tell you how many times my five-year-old daughter has asked me if she “looks fat” in this or that article of clothing. She has already begun to compare her body to others, and that is so unfair for her. Can we at least not make them care about body image until their teens?
Why trampy fairies, though? Why?
Summer Break Week 2
Posted: June 16, 2011 Filed under: family, kids, parenting | Tags: Badges, camp, friends, kids, Scouts, Summer Vacation Leave a commentThe Princess is in camp all week, and she seems to be enjoying it. Every day she comes home and says what a great time she had, but then the next morning it’s a fight to get her to go. She thinks 
she’s missing out on something here, I guess. (Little does she know.) So, I have been trying to placate her by saying that I will try to come pick her up after lunch, but I think she’s on to me. Today she said, “Don’t try. Do.” What is she, Yoda?
The other thing that’s nice is that she’s making friends there at the camp. Yesterday she came home and asked if her new friend could come for a sleepover. So, I said, “What’s your friend’s name?” But The Princess couldn’t say. I hope she doesn’t plan to do this kind of thing when she’s older — inviting a person she just met whose name she doesn’t know for a sleepover. That’s just a bad habit to get into. I met the kid today. She seems like a sweet girl, really cute with gorgeous ringlets of dark hair, but she’s not coming to sleep over. We just met her. Can’t we start slowly, with like, a playdate?
Meanwhile, Edison is not idle in this first full week off. No. He has devised a club, kind of like the Boy Scouts, with merit badges made of paper (and I think stolen from the Boy Scouts of America website, which he assures me is okay since he’s not making any money from this endeavor) called the Edison Scouts. He and Clooney were busy all afternoon, earning these badges. They ran around the house for the athletic badge. They created puppet shows for the entertainment badge. They biked to another part of the neighborhood for some other kind of badge. Oh, they were busy, busy. But more importantly, they were having fun together.
And when The Princess got home from camp, she joined the Edison Scouts, and they re-created all of the events for her so that she could earn her badges too. She was so happy; they all sat on the same side of the table at dinner, saying please and thank you and being closer than three middle toes in a pointed shoe. For the moment, there’s a lot of love in this house.
But in the words of Scarlet O’Hara: “Tomorrow is another day.”
Communication with siblings
Posted: June 14, 2011 Filed under: Day-to-Day, family, kids, parenting | Tags: LEGO game rules Leave a commentEdison was explaining the rules to a complicated LEGO game to the Princess, and she wasn’t paying close enough attention, I guess.
Edison: Princess, you need to listen to what I’m saying.
Princess (earnestly, in her litte squeaky 5 yo voice): I am. I am listening.
Edison: Then what did I just say?
Princess: You said “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
What are they teaching you people?
Posted: April 10, 2011 Filed under: Books, family, kids, parenting, school | Tags: Let the Great World Spin, September 11th, World Trade Center 5 Comments
Yesterday I was talking to my boys about the book I had just finished, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. (Great book, btw, highly recommend.) They asked me what it was about, so I said that it was about a bunch of people in New York City around the time that a guy walked between the World Trade Center Towers.
Philippe Petit walked between the towers in August of 1974. He crossed back and forth six to eight times during a span of forty minutes. His story is told in the film Man on Wire.
I thought this feat was totally amazing, but my kids just stared back at me blankly.
“You know the World Trade Center?”
Nnnnope.
The two towers that were destroyed on September 11th?
Nnnnope.
Not a bell rung there. Kind of reminded me of one time when I mentioned Jim Jones to my sister, who was born in 1971, and she had never heard of him either. She said that she would have been 
watching the Banana Splits in 1978, and she seriously doubted that they would have interrupted that programming to bring news of a mass murder/suicide to their audience.
I realize that my kids are young; Edison was only a year old when the towers fell, and I can remember him toddling around us as we watched the TV and wept for (among many things) his future. But I would think that in all the flag waving and patriotism we get every year around September 11th, there would be some discussion of why we remember that day. Shouldn’t there be?
I do know one thing: Next September, when we commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11th, there will be some discussion around this house.
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