Snapshot: Sunday at the Park

Today was a hot November day in Southern California.  Just when I think we're finally gaining reprieve from fans and dress code violations, unseasonably warm weather returns.  We thought about swimming, but the allure weakened when the girls learned that the diving board was closed for fall and winter.  Off we went to the park instead, with scooters and helmets in hand.

I love going to the park to people watch.  And when I say people watch, I mainly mean parent watch.  I mean, kids are fun to watch too--kids eating sand, kids flying off the spinny thingamajig, kids awkwardly approaching one another to play, kids sighing and rolling eyes at kids (okay, at my daughter) when they (she) doesn't wait her turn for the monkey bars--but I watch parents, in part, to watch various versions of myself. 

I know a nanny who loves to post photos of moms at the park on Facebook:  moms who sit on a bench to the side while their children play.  She doesn't approve.  I confess that I'm one of those moms, most of the time, until my children enlist my involvement:  push me on the swing, please, Mama.  Lift me so I can reach the monkey bars.  Watch me!  Watch me!  Watch me!  Once in a while I want to climb the rock wall, or prove to myself that I can't do monkey bars.  Otherwise, like yesterday, I prefer to lie in the grass and in the cool breeze and enjoy my children enjoying themselves.  And watch and listen to parents.

I eavesdropped on a dad sitting with another mom, talking politics:

"I mean, you've got to vote based on your current circumstances.  You can't vote on some unlikely possibility you're going to be some millionaire someday..."

"I just think it's kind of selfish to have that view..."

And, as they parted:  "I think you're actually more conservative than you think you are..."

"Oh, no I'm not!"

I cringed at the Shrill Mom censuring her son from across the park.  And then I realized all four of those boys seven years old and under were hers. 

Over by the swings, I struck up a conversation with a mother of two, one of whom has Down Syndrome.  We talked about school and teachers and classes for students with special needs. 

"I just want both my kids to be happy," she sighed. 

A sweet, teary little girl and her sister approached me when I flopped back onto the grass. "Where's my mom?" the eldest sniffled. I looked for a childless parent, and found my doppelganger, lying in the shade of a tree past the slide.  She lifted her head and waved. 

Meanwhile, in the burnished slanty sun marking the end of Daylight Savings Time, my girls and a friend made the most of the park, chasing each other, racing on scooters, sliding, climbing, swinging.  Laughing. And doing the spider: 

When we got in the car, I turned to the three girls with cherry-red cheeks in the backseat and said, "You know what it smells like in here?  It smells like sweaty kid."  And off we went for ice cream.

The Night of the Dudus

A recent conversation about "domestic" iguanas escaping into the trees of Santa Barbara and geckos living on the walls reminded me of a night in Kenya I will never forget: The Night the Termites Came to Town.

It's only fair to directly quote the journal I kept during my year living and teaching in Kenya:

Friday 8th November (1996)

Monday was "Attack of the African Rain Dudu" night--the little-known sequel to Hitchcock's The Birds.  During an afternoon conversation, Bharti [my tough Indian landlady] offhandedly joked and said we'd all eat at my house tonight, and I said, "Fine!" (but there's a Murphy's Law in play whenever Bharti, consummate Indian wife and mother, is around: that I will look stupid and do things wrong). I tried making focaccia [Kenya-style], and didn't follow directions [duh].  My spaghetti sauce was blah.  I even almost ruined the noodles.

In the midst of preparation for my guests, it began raining hard, and big flying bugs materialized near the kitchen window. Soon, there were multitudes coming through a crack at the side of the window. I wisely thought, I will open it, and let them fly out.

Yikes!  So many flying, flapping buggies were in my face and hitting the wall and then crawling around as I shrieked and hit them with a curtain and avoided squishing them underfoot,. I found even more in the living room and hallway, pouring into my porous house. It was an insect invasion like no other I had experienced.

In a flash of inspiration, I figured out they were attracted to light, and I turned on the outside bulb and extinguished all lights inside. I opened the front door, and many flew out.

The ones remaining appeared to lose their wings, crawl around, hump each other, and inexplicably disappear. Their wings, however, were ubiquitous. I joked with my fourth-grade students the next day that I could have stuffed pillows with dudu wings.

"You should have fried them up and eaten them, Miss," a student offered. "They taste like peanut butter."

Which might have been better than the spaghetti I served my guests that night.   

That they were "dudus" and tasted like sandwich spread were the only details offered by my students about these winged invaders. [I learned later that these were your garden-variety termites, the ones who build admirable mounds above ground. Here is a similar account of Termite Horror from a San Diego Zoo conservation program specialist]. 

It's not unusual for me to find an errant dudu wing tucked in an journal or bag I used during my time in Kenya...

List: Ways I Increase the Likelihood I Will Exercise

Formerly, I was only a runner.  I did a good amount of running, and that's all I did.  But as I mentioned recently, last year I joined a P90X "club" at school, which has broadened my exercise repertoire.  We meet at 5:45 AM in the gym on Mondays and Fridays, and as one can imagine, I've had to maximize the potential that I will actually leave my bed and my home to go make my body hurt in the wee hours. 

List:  Ways I Increase the Likelihood I Will Exercise (with an approximate 75% success rate):

1.  Assign husband the role of preparing and setting coffee maker to auto-brew at 5:15 AM.
2.  Set alarm for 4:45 and push "snooze" until 5:20.
3.  Have gym bag packed COMPLETELY with work clothes (try not to forget undies, bra, towel, or dress shoes, or endure awkward results), ready to grab by the front door.
4.  Go to bed dressed in workout clothes instead of pajamas:  jog bra, tee shirt, shorts.  Place socks and running shoes right next to bed. 
5.  Lie in bed between 4:45 and 5:20 thinking about the potential for chiseled arms, contoured legs, and ripped abs.  Get up despite necessary reality check.
6.  Lie in bed between 4:45 and 5:20 thinking about how lame it would be to skip the workout and have to change out of not-even-sweaty workout clothes.
7.  Lie in bed thinking about the reward of an amazing meal. 
8.  Fear the reprisals of colleagues in the club who will be there without you. 
9.  Drive fifteen minutes to the gym with a to-go mug of hot coffee:  just enough time to wake up and caffeinate.
10.  Acknowledge, as the car engine ignites, that it's too late to turn back now--high-five self about inevitable workout!  It's almost like it's already done. 

Almost. 

Sugar Crashing

This morning, still woozy from sleep and high blood sugar, Little Sis grabbed her bag of candy and snuggled with it on the couch, brandishing a full-sized Kit Kat with wonder and anticipation.  On my way out the door for work, and in the gentlest way possible, I let her know we'd be talking this evening about our plan for Hallo-wean-ing ourselves off an entire cache of candy. 

Last night Little Sis was an adorable Dorothy as promised, with only a little concern about my braiding skills (she likes them tight; I confess that I am a loose plaiter).  Big Sis, who planned to be a veterinarian, had an alter-identity crisis ("But, Mom!  No one is going to be a job for Halloween!") and effected a late-in-game switcheroo to "Island Princess," which, despite my shallow experience with the genre, I believe she pulled off tropically and triumphantly (if not, at first, tearfully). 

Note:  one costume I won't ever try to make myself:  Fourth Grader. It's far too shape-shifting. 

I went as a bat.  Or as a cat, or a witch, depending on your interpretation and commitment to scrutinizing my accessories.  It was another year of raiding the children's costume crate, so my bat wings extended only to my elbows. 

Grandparents and aunts and uncle joined the trick-or-treating entourage through our friendly neighborhood.  We came home with only 45 minutes or so left of peak scavenging left, but threw ourselves wholeheartedly into giving the older trick-or-treaters a hard time while the girls sorted and sifted their bounty.

When a teenager wearing street clothes and a gratuitous mask approached the porch, my brother greeted him.  "That's pretty weak, man," he nodded at the kid's mask.

The young man shrugged as he held out his candy bag.  "Oh yeah, well, it's the recession."

P.S.  We told the girls they could choose 10 pieces of candy to keep, and we'd give them $10 for the rest.  How do you negotiate the gobs of gobstoppers and gummies?

A Fourth Grader's Bullet Notes on the Presidential Debate

(The first 30 minutes, anyway...we didn't make it to bayonets):

• Foreign affairs
• 47%-47% "Dead Heat"
• Trade deficits
• Debate is in Florida
• 2 minutes to answer questions
• Obama being very reasonable 
• Attack on embacy
• 2 weeks in Irac
• both had good answers
• Mitt Romney has a better answer about terrorism
• They shouldn't be worried
• Obama is right about they shouldn't have troups in Irac
• I think they should let them deal with it to keep ourselves safe but help them by doing something else besides fighting
• I agree with Mitt in that we shouldn't put our troups in Syria
• Should talk things out so we don't have so many wars and so many people dying
• I agree with Obama in that women need freedom and education
• Fights in the Middle East
• We need a strong military and allies
• I agree with Romney in that we should help the world
• We need to get our economy going
• We need to stand for our allies
• I agree with Obama in that we should have good education
• We should have clean energy
• We need better jobs

And then Big Sis needed to go to bed.

Overall analysis the next day:  "I agreed with Romney, but it seems like Obama is still being pretty reasonable."

 

Cakeless, Bakeless Cake Pops

I've never wanted to make cake pops.  Yuck=frosting--I scrape it off when I eat cake--but you can't avoid the frosting in cake pops, because it's mixed in.  The mere thought of the stirring of the frosting and mushed cake makes me feel oogy the way packaged Danish with white icing does. 

But Big Sis received the Betty Crocker Halloween Cookbook from her grandparents in Iowa and she chose the "Boneyard Dirt Pops" when I told her we could bake something today with a friend.  I was so psyched to find that these are not even cake pops--they're Oreo cookie and cream cheese pops, dipped in melted chocolate chips.  No baking!  So easy!  So...sweet. 

We used a package of reduced fat Oreos blended with eight ounces of light cream cheese.  The girls rolled balls of batter and we chilled them for 45 minutes.  Then we stuck the pop sticks in and dipped the balls in melted chocolate.  Excess "dirt" (crumbled Oreos) and sprinkles topped them off. 

We're giving some to the friends who kindly dropped off owl cupcakes the other day (*burp*). 

Sweet Potato Soup

Mmmmm, I made some yummy soup for us tonight and I have to share my excitement and the "recipe" (it won't be exact...bear with me!).

As I was taking this photo, I had a bit of déjà vu; it turns out that I have been exuberant over sweet potato soup before--here's a 2009 version on gearheadmom.com (with more exotic ingredients like parsnips and turnips and butternut squash).

Tonight's soup is waaaay easy.  Here's the recipe:

Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:

a quarter-stick of butter (or olive oil)
4 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion (I used red because that's what I had), chopped
A handful of carrots, diced (because I had some--not necessary)
3 cups (or so) of chicken (or veg) broth
2 cups (or so) of milk (I used 1%--but how about coconut milk?)
3 dates (because I had some)
a clove of garlic, minced
a teaspoon cinnamon or cinnamon stick
a teaspoon nutmeg or to taste
a teaspoon ginger or to taste
4 fresh sage leaves (because I had some; not necessary or use dried)
pepper to taste

Sauté onions, potatoes, and carrots in butter till onions are translucent.  
Add spices and dates and stir to coat vegetables.  
Add broth and bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer till potatoes/vegetables are soft.
Remove cinnamon stick.
Add milk, stir, and blend soup with immersion blender (if you don't have one of these, you need one!!) until smooth.
Simmer till ready to eat.

Add maple syrup or cayenne paper for sweetness or spice.

Garnish with toasted nuts (pinenuts, hazelnuts, etc.) and/or sage.