Your List of Lists

In which your humble narrator taxonomizes awesomeness. 

It's a March round-up, y'all. First up:

Things that are Awesome

• Archer
• Fat Tire
• Chili-Mac from scratch
• Brunch with friends whose children play with our children largely unsupervised

Things that Are Awesome but Sad

• When Child #1 describes his stomach bug which produced a lot of diarrhea with the statement: "My bottom is sick."

Things that are Awesome by virtue of the longevity and consistency of their Awesomeness

• David Bowie

Things that are not Awesome

• March Snow
• Wife-a-roo's "raise"
• Trader Joe's parking lots. They are designed by the Architecture Firm of Satan, Satan, & Beelzebub.

A Teensy Misunderstanding

In which your humble narrator freaks out Wife-a-roo.

Thursday night, while preparing dinner after a long day of finding a leak in the new roof and discovering that it turns out we're going to need to replace our 33-year-old furnace or face the consequences of freezing to death, I was hunting for the can opener. Actually we have two can openers, the good one and the crappy one. To make it more interesting, they look exactly the same. One of them (Ol' Reliable) is a little heavier and actually opens cans. The other one (Seamus McPieceofcrap) lurches around the edge of the can like a drunken Irishman frequently popping off (see drunken Irishmen) and then bursting into a tuneless version of 'Danny Boy."

I couldn't find Ol' Reliable and was using Seamus to open up a can of crushed tomatoes and he did his usual terrible job, leaving two connections between lid and sides preventing me from accessing the delicious tomatoes contained within the can. Using the special 'moron center' of my brain, I resolved to just push down on one side to free the lid. And so I did, resulting in me neatly producing a little deli slice off the side of my left index finger. Being an incompetent clotter (I'm not a hemophiliac or anything, it just takes a long time) I clamped my thumb over the cut and raised my hand over my head.

"Shit," said I, "I cut myself." Wife-a-roo was at the kitchen sink. She whirled around and did her frightened muppet noise and started sputtering, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," which seemed a bit melodramatic.

It was then that I realized my left hand was covered in a tiny, tiny amount of blood and a copious amount of crushed tomatoes.

3 year old weird

In which your humble narrator relates a bizarre dialogue with Child #1.

Child #1: (after drinking) This orange juice makes my body smooth.

Me: What?

Child #1: This orange juice makes my body smooth.

 Me: Why?

Child #1: It just does, okay?

Cold Comfort

In which your humble narrator is grateful for a little well-timed aridity, celebrates improbably weddings, the color orange and remembers his paternal grandmother who couldn't remember anything.

It finally stopped raining. June has been unpleasant. It's either been beastly hot or raining or both (mostly both). If I wanted to live in a climate unfit for human habitation I would have decamped for Dixie years ago, thank you very much. The garden was waterlogged and there were mushrooms all over the lawn. Child #1 who assiduously scrapes any single particles of green vegetable matter off of his carrots has shown a surprising interest in eating the damn yard mushrooms. "No, no we only eat grocery store mushrooms!" And it's not like he would eat grocery store mushrooms either, but for some reason, potentially poisonous things growing in the yard look tasty. My sister suggested that I use this to my advantage and sprinkle foods he refuses to eat in the grass to gin up some interest. "Look! The yard grew us some meatloaf! Isn't nature's bounty wonderful?"

Wife-a-roo and I went to a wedding on Saturday. A friend of mine from my days working in the used bookstore got hitched to a perfectly lovely woman much to the surprise of everyone who knows this guy. A former unwashed, anarchistic, dread-locked, hippie-jock hybrid, this guy managed to find a charming woman who actually seems to, you know, love him. The wedding, for me, was a delightful combination of heartfelt goodwill mixed with with a noticeable undercurrent of surrealism, a bride dressed in a bitchin' orange wedding dress and free dinner. Just my kind of shindig.

The wedding was a nice way to end up what had been a lousy week which kicked off on Monday with news from West Virginia that my grandmother had died. She had suffered from Alzheimers for a number of years. The last time I saw her at my grandfather's funeral almost two years ago, I had to introduce myself to her. She was a good woman. She took care of my sister and I often when we were kids. She taught us a number of useful skills and took crap from no one. Her personality was big. She loved cheap beer, her unloveable fat cat, making things and delivering well-deserved smacks to various smart-alecky members of her family. She was an excellent cook and made everyone feel welcome in her home. She fumed loudly about sexism. She registered as a Republican to please her parents and became a liberal because of the civil rights movement. She sewed, knitted and crocheted. My daughter is sleeping tonight wearing a pajama shirt that Grandma made for me thirty years ago.

Her memory, language and abilities were all degraded by her disease to a point that the woman that I knew has been gone for a long time. Unlike some Alzheimer's patients, she seemed to, at least intermittently, be aware of her diminishing faculties. I suppose an easy death should seem like a relief for a woman who had lost so much of herself. But it's cold comfort.

The Big Schlep

In which your humble narrator goes to the big city, eats pizza and bagels and discovers that there are a hell of a lot of playgrounds in Manhattan.

Apologies for the infrequency of postings of late. The end of the term and its accompanying flurry of work and a recent trip out east have left little time for writing lists of stuff that irritates me. 

Child #2 rides the subway

Child #1 looks out over New York Harbor

Wife-a-roo, and Children #1 and #2 and I flew to New York last Wednesday. Wife-a-roo had a job interview with some sexy research outfit doing even sexier research than she usually does. Since they paid for her flight and we had access to an empty apartment courtesy of one of her investment-banky cousins,* we decided to make a trip of it.

Both children were surprisingly good travelers. The flight out was completely without incident except for when Child #1 was informed that he would have to remove his shoes in the security line. This prompted an on-the-floor screaming (and sock-footed) fit much to the delight of our fellow travelers behind us waiting for their own chance to do the TSA tango. Calm was restored on the other side of security when Child #1 was re-shod as he choked back the tears of rage and humiliation of having to go sock footed in public for 1.5 minutes.

We stayed in Manhattan near Gramercy park for two days. Wife-a-roo had her interview which went well. We saw an old friend from college. We ordered freakin' awesome takeout.

On Friday, Wife-a-roo's father drove down from ye olde New Hampshire homestead to meet up with us. We had lunch at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the village. Then we piled into his ancient Volvo and went out the Mid-town tunnel to the Long Island Expressway to go stay for a couple of nights at the North Shore Home of Wife-a-roo's aunt.

A brief note on Wife-a-roo's family and their relationship to cars. They kill them. Dead. Grandpa's Volvo has 323,000 miles on it. The air-conditioning is kaput. It was 90 degrees and humid on the L.I.E. outbound on a Friday afternoon. Then the car overheated.

Happy Birthday, Baby! And now for some violent purges...

In which your humble narrator celebrates his daughter's existence and spills his guts.

As of last Friday, Child #2 has made the complete circuit around the sun. Feeling ever pressured by society's expectations that we celebrate these sort of milestones by "doing" "something" (other than our regular routine of keeping the children alive and then collapsing into the forgiving, oaky arms of a mid-priced Kentucky Bourbon once they're finally in bed), we organized an extremely modest festival in honor of Child #2's first year.

We invited two sets of friends with children near the same ages as ours (our only local friends with similarly aged children), plus my mother and sister. The children (all falling between 1 and 4 years) played as a group, mostly independently. Food was eaten. Cake was mashed into faces. Fun was had by all until everyone had to go home to take a nap. Child #1, currently suffering from bad pollen allergies, was watery-eyed and full of snot at the end of the party. I trotted out to the local chain apothecary to purchase some antihistamines for his sad looking little self.

Walking back to the car, I thought to myself, "Hrmmm, I feel a little bit queasy. Must have been the cake" (not usually partaking in rich, butter-creamed sugar-bombs). And I went back home.

The next 6 hours are a bit foggy. I know that I completely purged my entire digestive track with a violence best described as "Stalinist." I remember sitting on the potty thinking, "I am going to have a terrible funeral. The Rabbi is going to have to tell everyone that I died from pooping out all of my internal organs. Everyone will be embarrassed."

Child #1 got it and puked all over my house... but I was sick so I didn't have to clean it up. He was so ill that rather than running around as a maniac as per usual, he actually spent most of Sunday in my bed watching Curious George cartoons, at least while we weren't sleeping or he wasn't leaning over to vomit on my pillow.

Needless to say, we survived. It was yet another vile virus brought home courtesy of Wife-a-roo who apparently works in an open sewer staffed by lepers militantly opposed to hand-washing. We're thinking about putting up a decontamination tent in the yard.

In better news, it's the last week of term. By this time next week, I should be free and unencumbered by undergraduate papers for at least 4 weeks. Now about writing that dissertation...

Reflections on an undocumented week

In which your humble narrator writes a list rather than composing a substantive essay about something of interest.

• Lists are easier to write than regular posts.
• This is the earliest spring I've ever seen in 12 years in Minnesota.
• Undergraduates have a hard time focusing when the temperature is above 60 degrees.
• A friend applying to the bar (you know, like, lawyering) asked me to write a a character reference for her application (being her friend with the best ratio of "length of time known" to "ability to write sentences"). I emailed the first line of my draft letter to her: 

"Dear State Board of Lawyerliness: J.R.T. is one of the finest, most ethical hoboes that it has ever been my privilege to drink with under a bridge. She only stole my bottle of gin once and that was my fault since I pushed her shopping cart into the river."

• Child #2 has taken to signaling that she has finished her meal by hurling the remainder of her food to the floor, or grasping it and rubbing it vigorously into her scalp.
• Potty training Child #1 is a total drag.
• Apparently, I like talking about the Large Hadron Collider way more than most people. Particle acceleration is cool and "Large Hadron Collider" is fun to say. 
• On a related note: I am made inordinately happy when man-made calamities do not end life as we know it. First they fired up the Large Hadron Collider and we didn't get blinkered out of existence in an "oopsie-doodle" accidental black hole. Second, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann appeared together on stage in Minneapolis and the resulting explosion of jingoistic malarkey proved to be entirely metaphorical, leaving my beloved adopted homeland relatively unscathed.
• Manchego is a tasty cheese.

The Great Escape

In which your humble narrator throws off the shackles of viral-based confinement and high-tails it out of the house.

Having been infected with yet another virus this week, Child #1 spent 5 entire days home-bound. Being confined to the house makes Child #1 transform from a pleasant, agreeable Dr. Jekyll-type character into the 2.4 year-old version of Edward Hyde. Despite the hellish nature of his first 6 months on earth (colic), which were then followed by "The Great Unpleasantness" (6-12 months) he's been a rather amiable little chap ever since then. That is, unless you make him stay home for more than 2 days in a row. Then the evil begins.

It starts innocuously enough with fussing, whining and an overuse of the word "no." It then progresses to throwing things, slamming doors and tantrums. This continues to build until he reaches the stage of "Purposive Badness" wherein he starts doing weird stuff that he knows is completely forbidden, i.e., getting into the refrigerator by himself, pulling books off of shelves, and making a mess with whatever (usually liquid) substance that his fatigued, ill and stupid parents have left within his reach. Once he starts drawing pentagrams on the floor and trying to summon the demon Lord of Hell he gets put into a time-out.

Today, all of us having mostly recovered, I asked Child #1 if he wanted to go to Costco. Despite being in the midst of one of his weird little projects, he looked up and seemed to have a spasm of joy while he shrieked "YES!"

So Child #1, Child #2 and I embarked to Costco to buy toilet paper, baby formula and cheese. There was a space next to the cart corral when we got there, so I plunked both children into the cart (Costco has double seated carts) and we went inside where we walked virtually every aisle, just looking at stuff. After purchasing our items we had a delightful snack at the snack bar and spent 5 minutes looking at the demo Nissan Altima parked by the exit.

On the freeway on the way home, a small voice from the back seat inquired, "Can we go to another store?"

So we did. And after a stop at the Co-op, our arms full of Hippie Groceries, we returned home again, safe for at least five more days from the infernal one.

Of Deviled Eggs, Bad Science and the Psychology of Stupidity

In which your humble narrator makes a mistake.

First, I confess. I read the Huffington Post. A college friend of mine used to work for her Greekness, and I've read it for years. I rationalize it by claiming that it's just like the New York Post, but for urban, liberal types.

Last night I made the mistake of clicking on the "Living" tab on Huffington Post. For the love of God, if you enjoy food, don't feel particularly like mediatating, doing yoga or actualizing your dream states, don't visit. All food is viewed through the prism of it's effects on your health. The headline article today is "GLUTEN: What you don't know might KILL you." This article takes a surprisingly individual tack toward self-diagnosis. First, the author tells you to cut all gluten from your diet, then reintroduce it. If you feel bad at all after reintroduction you should never eat gluten again. And this guy is an M.D. Really? A single trial test? Shouldn't doctors have some familiarity with, oh... I don't know, SCIENCE?

I think that the vast majority of these articles are really about two complementary psychological desires. The first is to find an explanation for your illness/addiction/fatness/compulsive sexual behavior with Peruvian mountain goats that relieves you of any responsibility at all. That goat was asking for it. And the second desire is to individuate oneself from all the other wealthy boutique liberals so you can be unique like everyone else. For additional examples of these two complementary psychological drives please see: Oprah, Dr. Phil, daytime medical television and the entire self-help industrial complex. I'm pretty resigned to most of this silliness, but please, leave food out of it.

To help us move past this idiocy, here's a nice picture of some deviled eggs from one of my Mom's family reunions a couple of years ago. They're a pain in the butt to prepare. They're not good for you. You should still eat them and enjoy them. I do.

Snow Fail

In which your humble narrator climbs on ladders, scrapes ice off of things, and wonder where the hell the "warmer than average" El Niño winter forecasted by the National Weather Service is.

The Snowpocalypse was a bust. We got about 5 hours of cold rain on top of 12+ inches of snow on Christmas, soaking the snow, turning the bottom 2 inches to slush. Then it snowed another 3-4 inches on top of that. Then it melted some more and then hard froze turning every horizontal, and most sloped surfaces to ice. Needless to say, the slush/ice removal has been a real pain.

So I've been up and down a ladder unfreezing all the downspouts so that the ice doesn't push our new gutters right off of the house. Too much fun.

On a more positive note, I got a new cookbook from the in-laws for my birthday. My birthday was more than a month ago, but I just got the package from New Hampshire. Apparently the shipping label came off and it got sent to the dead letter office in Atlanta. (Which is funny because the only other dead letter office is in St. Paul... about 10 minutes from our house.) It's the Veselka Cookbook. So I made pierogies since they're exactly the sort of bad-for-you, fatty, fiddly food you should eat in the middle of winter to keep your coat shiny. They we quite tasty. Child #1 even ate a couple of bites the first night we had them. Of course, on the second night he declared that he didn't like them any more and would not eat them. He's still on a weird jag.

On a second, also positive note, Child #2 has decided to sleep through the night regularly. Thus, my power of cogitation and command of the lexicon have returned with vigor. Huzzah!

Housebound Housewifery

In which your humble narrator comments on the banality of his day.

It snowed about 8 inches. It's only 10 degrees and very windy. I'm stuck in the house all day with the children.

Wife-a-roo sent me a link to a Salon blog by Aaron Traister which pretty much sums up my existence these days. A particularly salient paragraph:

"My view of parenting and its effect on the adult mind is particularly sour right now since my daughter has just entered into the most difficult stage of development. She is 10 months old, and while most people would point to the fabled “terrible twos” as the most challenging and exhausting time with their young ones, the interval between 8 and 15 months is almost indescribably difficult for me, especially because it is making me not good at words plus how to use them."

Child #2 is 7+ months old now and at the incredibly obnoxious stage where she is increasingly mobile, but only in uni-directional pathways. For example: she can maneuver from a seated position to lying either on her back or her stomach, but is unable or unwilling to move from either of those positions to any other, more satisfactory position. This necessitates righting her or rearranging her approximately every 2.5 minutes* since she doesn't like lying down: the position, but only lying down: the act. Thank God for overalls.

Last night I was in the kitchen with the children. Child #2 was sitting in her high chair screaming unhappily and refusing all toys or diversions while Child #1 was merrily running head first into the kitchen cabinets and trying valiantly to drop cast-iron cookware on his feet.**  Wife-a-roo was late because of the snowstorm and I was trying to cook dinner (modest pasta dish). It occurred to me: "If I'm going to live the life of a 1950's housewife, I'm pretty sure I deserve some of the pills."

* I have righted Child #2 eight times during the writing of this post.
** He still has a cold. Colds make him insane and self-injurious.

Happy Pie Day, America

In which your humble narrator discusses the familial tradition known as "Pie Day."

It's Pie Day again. As I write, Wife and I have completed 7 pies with one in the oven and one yet to go. Each year, on the Wednesday that precedes Thanksgiving, we gather together to celebrate the making and baking of many pies twinned with a nod to those Puritan jerks by practicing discipline and self denial by not eating any of the pie until tomorrow. That way, we can experience true gratitude.

This year we're skipping the self-denial part because my Grandma's here and she gets crabby about waiting.

To help you initiate your own family tradition which explores the dualism of abundance and scarcity in a context rich with Americana, follow these simple steps:

• Step One: Take the Day off work (natch)
• Step Two: Plan your Pies and write down your schedule
• Step Three: Follow the rules of Pie Day

1. Don't talk about Pie Day
2. Don't talk about Pie Day
3. There are no rules
4. Make your own crusts, you lazy piece of #%@!
   
5. Make sure to make more pies than there are people expected at Thanksgiving. To achieve the proper sense of abundance, at least 1.5 pies/guest is recommended.
   

Watcha got cookin'?

In which your humble narrator talks about food, even though maybe he really shouldn't.

I cook. And for the most part, I cook because I enjoy it. It's the least odious component of housewifery as far as I'm concerned. I read books about food. I listen to radio programs about food. I have what's grown into an actual collection of cookbooks. I used to just own cookbooks, but then I started buying weird, non-utilitarian cookbooks with recipes for turkeys stuffed with weiners, tripe, 60's style canapes, et cetera. Once you go down the road of just buying cookbooks for the awful food photography or weird antiquated prose dedicated to the "noble onion," I'm pretty confident that it qualifies as a "collection." I nabbed this from flickr, but it does appear in one of my cookbooks from the 1960's-1970s "creative period" in American cookery.

What always shocks me is that someone spent time creating such a putrid dish. I sincerely doubt that it had been "a winner at the dinner table for generations" when this was published.

The only thing that Americans are more neurotic about than sex is food. Rather than food being an enjoyable component of the whole "staying alive" thing that we've all got going on, it's become yet another arena in which we get to broadcast our social and political viewpoints to the world. I fully cop to being snooty about food. I prefer organic stuff when I can afford it. We don't eat highly processed stuff. We generally avoid food with scary chemical ingredients. But mostly I've made those decisions because the snooty foods taste better and are generally better for us. Yet, I don't think that really confers any moral superiority on me. I think dinner should just be dinner most of the time. And that means not talking about the food and its pedigree while you're at the table. And at the same time, I realize that most people eat garbage. Yet somehow I don't think looking down my nose at people the shop for groceries at Wal-Mart is going to lead them to make better choices when it comes to food. Manufacturers of food-like products have spent a lot of time and money convincing us that we don't have the time to cook and then offering us "convenience foods" that taste yucky and aren't very convenient. The greatest success of American advertising has been to convince us all how busy* we are. But hey! Here's a miracle product that will solve that problem.

When we were kids, my sister and I would ask Dad what was for dinner:

Us: What's for dinner, Pop?
Dad: Food.
Us: What kind of food?
Dad: Good food.
Us: Yeah, but what is it old man? We're too short to see what you're doing on the counter there.
Dad: Good food that you will like.
Us: You are completely obnoxious.
Dad: Yes.

And the thing is... I do this to my wife all the time. She's a picky eater, so I don't like to tell her what's in dinner because then she'll spend twenty minutes trying to pick out the offending ingredient (usually a vegetable).

My Mom was asking what motivated this behavior the other day. "Why does everyone always ask and why does the cook never want to answer the question?" I told her it was like when you buy a gift for someone and do a fancy job wrapping it up and then you finally present it to her and she sits there with a fully wrapped present on her lap and asks, "What is it?" And you say, "What the hell is wrong with you? Just open the damn thing!"

Sit down and enjoy the meal.

*Here's a handy test of whether you are "busy": 

1. Do you watch Dancing with the Stars, America's Next Top Model, Project Runway or Oprah?
2. Do you have machines that wash and dry your clothes for you?
3. Do you have indoor plumbing?
   
4. Do you have time to take footnoted blog tests?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you are not "busy" so please do not talk to me about it.

Say it ain't so, Sven

In which your humble narrator pleads with Swedes to undo their misdeeds.

Yesterday, Wife and Sister-of-me accompanied me and the children to our local IKEA for some super-cheap breakfast and crazy-fun time playing on the furniture displays. For those of you who do not have small children and don't live on the frozen tundra I should explain that when the cold winds of winter begin to blow in October, house husbands, like your humble narrator, become desperate for something to do to get out of the house with the offspring. IKEA serves as our own personal indoor playground for the snowy/rainy/freezy months.

I frequently drag some relation out to breakfast at the IKEA once a month or so. It has child-friendly, bland food and a family of 4 can have breakfast for less than $8.00. And as long as you're cool with the bus-loads (literally) of developmentally disabled folks that have also discovered this happenin' breakfast spot it's a good way to kill a morning. The food is not so great. They eggs have a distinctly industrial color and freakishly uniform texture. The bacon is more like the ghost of bacon. But the potatoes... well those were good. (Cue ominous music.)

Child #1 has been a big fan of the potatoes at breakfast. Tasty, finger sized cubes of potatoey goodness perfect for dippin' in ketchup. (Or as Child #1 says: Topatoes in Chup.) But the potatoes have changed. Not longer are they perfect little bite-sized cubes. Now the potatoes are a part of some un-Godly frozen vegetable hash with the following components: tiny greasy onion bits, microscopic red bell pepper fragments, green bean bits, itty-bitty carrot strings and unidentifiable yellow things (in IKEA-speak: "Weyrdyelobitz*").

So, please Overlords of Crappy Swedish Cafeteria Breakfast, change the damn potatoes back! I can't handle this sort of change. 

*There should be an umlaut in here somewhere but I can't figure out how to make blogger do that. Please imagine it over the vowel of your choice. Hell, imagine two of 'em. I won't judge.

Force Feeding a Yen

In which your humble narrator uses cunning and guile to outwit the overwhelming negativism of Child #1

Child #1 is two years old. In a streak of developmental conformity, he has appropriately discovered the joy of "No!" Since he decided to leap ahead from slightly behind the normal language development curve to well ahead of it in the space of the past eight weeks, his "no" usage has blossomed into an array of negative statements such as, "I don't like [insert object of disdain] anymore," and "I don't want [insert reviled object] right now." Each diaper change requires a lengthy two-year-old treatise on how he no longer enjoys diaper changes, thank you, and would prefer to wallow in his own filth. The implication seems to be that diaper changes are an activity that I, his cruel and overbearing father, find so rewarding that I insist on several a day to feed my constant need to deal with urine and excrement. When I've tried to inquire that perhaps he might like to do his business on the potty, negating the need for diaper changes, he's told me, "No, I don't think so."

The enchantment with negativism has affected his diet considerably as well. The number of foods that his little majesty deigns to eat seems to decrease regularly. He currently survives on Trader Joe's cereal bars. I expected that there would be some dietary restrictions at this age but it makes me a little sad none-the-less as he used to be such a good little eater. I figure that he'll come around again eventually.

The problem presented by his refusal to eat anything is that there's not a lot of protein in his diet. He won't drink milk and seems to have lost all interest in meat, dairy or legumes. After two or three days with protein he starts getting crabby.

I love food. I love cooking. I'm a relatively adventurous eater. I don't believe in forcing little kids to eat things. Meals should be enjoyable, not venues for pitched battles over trying things and "two more bites" and cleaning your plate. But earlier this week I made macaroni and cheese for lunch and he wouldn't eat it. I prepare bland, quintessential kid food and his little majesty turns up his nose. "No! I don't like macaroni any more! No! No!"

So I took his plate away and puttered for a moment while he wound down his exposition on the evils of macaroni. Then when he wasn't paying attention I approached from behind his chair and shoved a forkful into his mouth. His little features crumpled as if I had slapped him across the face. It was that crushing hurt/angry/shocked look that little kids give you right before you break down and buy them a puppy. I was horrified at what I had done. Then he chewed it up and did a dramatic gulp of a swallow. And he said, "Nummy. More. Put it in a bowl. Macaroni now." He went on to eat two bowls and to declare repeatedly, "Ooooh! Delicious!"

This week I'm going to teach him to say, "My Daddy says I can be a real stinker."

Fasting is good for the Soul, but bad for the eyeballs.

In which your humble narrator fasts for a day, has to pee during Kol Nidre and repents all those nasty things he's ever said about Cindy McCain.

Monday was Yom Kippur. As a "pretty good" Jew I fasted from sundown on Sunday until Monday evening. I ate a big meal while the sun still shone on Sunday, preceded by two beers, and followed by three glasses of water. It's best to keep hydrated. Or so they say. The problem is that my bladder thinks otherwise. So despite talking sternly with my digestive system that it wasn't getting any love for 25 hours, I pretty much peed every half hour until I went to bed. And of course, I had to get up in the middle of the hour-and-a-half Kol Nidre Service to go to the potty. Making it even better, my undergrad adviser who I hadn't seen in about a year was there with her husband.  She was great but I used to have to pee during her classes all the time too, which I fear she may remember since she winked at me while I was on the way back to my seat. How embarrassing.

Fasting may be good for the soul but it's pretty bad for my head since every other year it results in a stupendous migraine of near mythical proportions.  We packed up the children and took them to the "Tot Service" at our temple. They were mostly good. Then we went home so that I could not have lunch. Wife didn't fast. She's still lactating which means she doesn't have to fast since it would mean that her milk would dry up and she'd pass out or something. Obviously, the children didn't fast as it's a spiritually enriching joy reserved only for adults. So I'm hanging around mostly succesfully thinking about the things that you're supposed to ponder on the holiest day of the year, like: "I should be a better person," and "I repent," and "I wonder where the Rabbi gets those completely, blindingly, white shoes. Maybe there's a store in Florida or something." But by 4:30 I'm laying on the couch, surfing waves of nausea, trying to pile blankets on my head trying to shut out the accursed light and hoping desperately that Child #1 would stop touching me while intangible ice picks stabbed through my eyeballs into my brain.

This was only a day after I read an article about Cindy McCain's struggle with migraines. Since I've spent a lot of time saying unkind things about Cindy McCain this made me have yet another thing to repent for on Yom Kippur (Thanks a lot, New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs Section!). Lots of snarky people continue to make fun of Cindy's commitment to fund research into migraines. As a usually snarky person, I can relate to this impulse, but I'd still like to invite those people to shut the hell up. That also goes for those of you who claim to suffer from migraines and yet don't really. There's a special place in hell for you too.

I broke down and availed myself of some prescription pharmaceuticals at about 5:30 and then napped until almost sundown. The wife had ordered pizza. Nothing tastes better than the first howlingly non-kosher pepperoni pizza after Yom Kippur.

Sorry, Cindy.

Cake for Breakfast

In which your humble narrator bakes a cake.

Last Monday Child #1 turned two. We celebrated on the preceding Sunday. For him, the largest boon seemed to be the sudden frequent availability of chocolate cake. I wasn't in the mood to do anything fancy-schmancy so I made a chocolate sheet cake with chocolate frosting out of the Cook's Illustrated Baking Book which has not yet steered me wrong. I started making it while Child #1 was eating breakfast. He asked what I was doing and I told him, "I'm making a cake for your birthday."

He looked at me incredulously and asked, "Cake for breakfast?"

I'm not really a baker. I don't enjoy it as much as real cooking. There are all these fussy requirements when you're baking. That said, the cake turned out really well. I made up some green frosting to write "Happy Birthday" on the cake and we stuck a "2" shaped candle on it and sang. Child #1 actually clasped his little hands together in delight when we presented the cake to him.

He's asked for "cake for breakfast" every day since then.