Andrew, the girls and I flew down to LA for the Thanksgiving holiday. We flew on some of the busiest days of the year, and quite frankly I was dreading it. The girls are only 4 and 2 years old, and have never flown before. While I know other families who have been flying since the children were babes in arms, I had never before felt comfortable with the thought of wrangling the hypermuffin around an airport, much less the flight itself. But this was finally the year to do it, and so, with much trepidation on my part, we took the plunge.

I was going to post about the vacation itself, and I still will, but I'd like to devote this post to singing the praises of Virgin America. It's the Christmas season now, so I'm going to call this The Twelve Wins of Virgin.

1): Price. Virgin's prices were the lowest. Need I say more? Since I'm a cheapskate, this is the sum total of the reason I booked our tickets with them; I certainly didn't book them because of the much-circulated write-up of Virgin's airline food that we've probably all seen by this point. :-)

2): Booking was easy. Plus, I had the opportunity to sign up for texts from the airline telling me whether my flights were on-time or not. (!) Sure, I haven't flown since 2005, so maybe I'm just easy to impress, but this impressed me.

3): When I called the airline with a question, the day before Thanksgiving, my hold time was low and the employee I spoke with was well-informed, polite, articulate, cheerful, and concise.

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We're off on a family trip -- incidentally, the first trip we've taken with the girls that involved an airplane. Car rides and ferry rides yes, and the hypermuffin has even been on a bus (although the wren has not, yet) -- but never an airplane ride until today.

tatterdamelion will be holding down the fort and making sure our basement doesn't wash away in all this rain. The sump pump is definitely working overtime right now... It'll actually be super-nice to sleep someplace dry, without the various "quirks" and problems that make our house so "special." ;-)

Oh, and it'll be nice to go someplace where someone else has done ALL the Thanksgiving prep and cooking. I don't think I've ever spent a Thanksgiving in my adult life without cooking something. It's definitely been since at least college. I've either taken a dish (or the turkey!) somewhere else, or else, after we bought the house, I've always thrown the whole bash at our place.

It's so odd to me not to be hosting Thanksgiving, or at least taking something along, that I even considered baking banana muffins to carry on the flight and present to my mother-in-law. Thankfully, sanity prevailed. I'm sure she already has more than enough food.

Today was the first "Steel Chef" competition at my office. Depending on interest levels, this may continue, or it may have been a one-time-only thing. The parameters: Create a dish with the secret ingredient at home, and bring in enough small portions to feed the office. The secret ingredient? COCONUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILK!!!!

Coconut milk is a great ingredient, because it can be used in both sweet and savory dishes. The first things that popped into my mind were all sweet -- Coconut Milk Creme Brulee, Coconut Milk Pumpkin Mini-Tarts, Coconut Milk Bread Pudding with Macadamia Nuts and Ginger Syrup, etc. I assumed everyone else would do desserts, though -- so to be different, I decided to do something savory.
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When I was at World Market Spices last spring, I picked up a small plastic bag of bright red beetroot powder. I'd heard it was a more natural alternative to red #3, or red #40, or whatever other petroleum-derived coloring has replaced the beetle-derived coloring in licorice, lipstick, cotton candy, etc. Seriously, people, when your choices are (1) eat something derived from beetles, or (2) eat something derived from petroleum, go with the beetles.

Or, in my case, go with the beets. I used my fancy, pretty beetroot powder once, last May, to color some marshmallow frosting that I put on some double-chocolate cupcakes when I was making Devil's Food Cupcakes with Marshmallow Frosting of the Damned for a LARP we were throwing as the kickoff to Andrew's freshly started "Three Havens" game. (The cupcakes, and the frosting, turned out super-well, despite me being out of all sorts of ingredients and having to improvise.) But then the beetroot powder sat quiescently in my baking cupboard.

The other day, one of the girls wanted pink cottage cheese. I took down my beetroot powder in order to grab a smidge to stir in, and found -- a solid, brittle, dark-red mass. It looks like solidified taffy, or one of Cthulhu's ganglia. It's hard and unyielding. I managed to snap off a small tendril and stir it into the cottage cheese, where it did eventually dissolve into a lovely red tint.

So, my questions:
1) What happened? How does powder turn into -- this? Did it get too hot? Or what?
2) Now what do I do with all of this? There's way too much for any normal purpose. But there has to be some creative use for a few ounces of beetroot powder that have gone rogiue. (Rogue? Rouge? Oh, never mind.)

Our good friend aawhitewood is a senior circuit judge for Magic: The Gathering, who has trained pretty much every other Magic judge on the circuit. This means nothing to most people, but it means that within a small group of people, he has huge amounts of prestige.

Tonight during Andrew's game, aawhitewood has fielded two calls from colleagues needing a ruling on a difficult card situation. It was interesting to hear his voice snap into "judge mode." He is not afraid to tell it like it is, including telling other people that they are Wrong with a capital W.

All the talk of Magic rules reminded me of the time in my life, circa 1995, when I collected Magic cards. I very seldom actually played a game; instead, I bought them for the pretty art; the interesting quotations on each one that, taken together, formed a fantasy world; and for the thrill of collecting something.

I seem to remember that the card packs had sticks of terrible-quality, wooden chewing gum inside them... but that must be a displaced memory from earlier in my life, when I collected story cards from the cartoon show "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (don't judge me). I'm certain those packs of cards contained bad chewing gum. Did the Magic cards? This happened to me only 15 years ago, when I was already an adult; how have I forgotten it already? I need to start writing things down or else I will forget my whole life while I'm still living it...

In any case, all the talk of Magic tonight reminded me of the Emily Dickinson poem "Crumbling is not an Instant's Act." When I read it, all I could think was, "Isn't the 'Crumble' card an Instant effect?"

When shown this poem, aawhitewood remarked that it actually refers to several other Magic spells. Perhaps Emily Dickinson's estate could sue WoTC for stealing her ideas... ;-)

Poem 997 

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays —

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —

Ruin is formal — Devil's work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crashe's law — 

Hyperbolic Plane A has been completed. I kind of wanted to keep going, but it was a good size for a Christmas tree ornament.

The hypermuffin tells me that next I should make a blue one. I was going to do red, but I suppose I can compromise on this point...

This first model, I increased one stitch in every stitch. I think this next one, I'll increase in every other stitch. It should give it a less profuse and bunched quality. Here's a shot of a plane that's been increased every other stitch:

Another busy week that doesn't easily turn into an interesting LJ post. The week included a 2-hour outing with my "team" at work to go bowling and have a drink together... right before the hypermuffin 's preschool Open House, for which I had volunteered to bring a treat. Luckily I'd planned ahead, and the previous night I'd enlisted her help to make pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting; yum. (I have leftover frosting in the fridge. Hmmm...)

The week also included our every-other-week game of "Scion," last night. Menu: Homemade Cornish green pepper and beef pasties as prepared by our friend Mark; garlic bread brought by Mike; homemade meatballs prepared on the spot by Tom and dropped into tomato sauce (to be eaten atop the garlic bread), and authentic German cookies brought by Nikki. It is a food-oriented group. Today, to recover, I made a big green salad as part of lunch, and just juiced a pineapple.

This morning I brought the wren along to gymnastics class. Usually that hour is all mine, as the 4-year-old runs and jumps in her class. But this morning, the 2-year-old wanted to spend some time with me. She was disappointed at first that she didn't get to do gymnastics too -- my assurances that she'll have a class starting in December meant nothing to her -- but she recovered enough to walk 2 blocks with me to the local library, do a few puzzles, and walk back. I think we may be doing this again; it's a nice chunk of mom-toddler time.

Now Andrew's off to work and I'm feeding the girls a snack. I'll have to take them out somewhere... probably either the library again or McDonald's, or both... but then tonight I think I'll roast more pumpkin seeds and make a pumpkin sheet cake to use up that leftover frosting.

Am really hoping to get to McDonald's, actually, because maybe this time they'll leave me alone for 10 minutes so I can get some crocheting done. Last time they ignored the slides and ramps in order to come and see the fascinating project that I was working on... :-P

Last night I started, and tonight I continued, my very first crocheted hyperbolic plane. I'm doing this one first:



Photo credit: The Institute for Figuring, http://theiff.org/gallery/crocheted_hyperbolic/index.html

I'm increasing every stitch, and already, at only 8 or 9 rows in, it's a lovely ruffled shape. I can tell that it's going to get very crazy very fast. I hope to make several in this design to use as Christmas ornaments, but I'd also love to get into some of the other designs, too, as long as I can remember where I am in the order of increase.

One nice side effect of crocheting: I can be physically present with my girls, but mentally detached from them. It gives me some mental "alone time" even though they're right there with me, bouncing on my knee and ramming their skulls into my shoulders. In my mind, I'm engaged in valuable adult time, yet it's work that's repetitive enough that I can pick it up or put it down in an instant, unlike reading a book or writing an essay.

Maybe this is why so many "traditional cultures" feature large amounts of textile crafting work on the part of the women. It gives us something to do to take our minds off the endless round of caring for very young children.

Some of my friends have an awesome yearly ritual: Celebrating "NaDruWriNi," short for National Drunk Writing Night. Committing to writing an entire novel during the month of November is difficult. Committing to getting trashed on November 7th and writing something while drunk seems considerably easier to manage.

I'm sitting at home, not drunk (nor with any plans to become so), and I'm seeing post after post from friends doing NaDruWriNi. And, just like anybody else would, I feel left out.

Can Catherine participate in NaDruWriNi without actually being Dru? Probably not, but then again, who's going to police me? All the likely people are currently getting Dru and preparing to get their Wri on. I think I'm safe...

Let's do this. Let's write about something.

( Summer camp, popularity, conformity, and love )

I've belonged to the hip_domestics community for the past year or so. I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with it. Today I finally left the community and removed it from my friends page... I may have blogged about some of the annoying posts I've seen on there before -- I honestly can't remember -- but just in case I haven't, here are the kinds of posts that have annoyed me the most.

• Posts asking for feedback on a certain product -- don't post on hip_domestics for that! Check out the specific product's reviews on Amazon, or wherever the actual product is sold!


• Posts asking us to read the minds of other people whom we have never met. The worst example was a woman who posted that her husband hates cream cheese frosting, but that she wanted to make him a cake with cream cheese frosting, and how she could make him like it anyway. Um, you can't, because the man doesn't like cream cheese frosting! Even if you can somehow manage to pull off the task of making him like it anyway, it will be because of some magic that you perform, nothing that strangers on the internet can tell you.


• Posts asking for instructions on things that are insanely easy, like how to melt marshmallows. I mean, come on. I always told myself that perhaps the questioners were 12 or 13, and that's why they couldn't figure out how to put marshmallows in a saucepan over low heat and/or how to melt them in the microwave and/or how to at least Google "how to melt marshmallows."

I think I'm just getting more and more crotchety in my old age. I kept feeling the urge to reply to questions with the link to JFGI.

I got a catalog from Brookstone and managed to find a minute to flip through it. At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket over how other people choose to spend their money... some of these inventions are just completely over the line.

When I see the picture of the man happily watching TV next to his sleeping wife, while equipped with wireless TV headphones, all I can think is, "Why do you have a TV in your bedroom??" I know a lot of people do, and for some houses I'm sure it makes sense, but bringing a TV into the bedroom is a great way to interrupt one person's sleep... unless, of course, you purchase the wireless TV headphones for only $49.95.

As I flip through this catalog, I get the sense that Americans have a gizmo to prevent every tiny twinge, discomfort, or lack imaginable. Socks that are lined with electrical heating pads... A machine to project seasonal displays on the exterior of your house... A shower system for your iPod, so you won't be without your music for even 10 minutes... A gizmo to put in the soil next to your plants to measure the sunlight, humidity, temperature, and soil drainage, that plugs into a PC to access a database of 6,000 plants... A warmer for your towels, so after you get out of the shower your towel is already warm for you... And, of course, an ultra-plush version of a Snuggie -- a blanket with arms, so no part of you will ever be cold ever again. Except maybe your eyebrows. And of course it's only a matter of time until there's an electric eyebrow warmer. Maybe in the spring catalog.

Of course, Brookstone is also loaded with things that make me think, "Hey, I could really use one of those!" Like the Smart Tire Gauge -- I'm always worried that I will overinflate the tires and cause them to explode and kill me, which is probably a much greater danger in my mind than in reality. Or how about the desktop cup warmer so your cup of coffee doesn't get cold? The self-powered emergency radio would be handy in case of a doomsday scenario. And the electronic coin sorter would certainly save time rolling coins -- I won't use CoinStar because of the convenience fee.

But one person's convenience is another person's ridiculous extravagance. Until it gets to the stage of being a fully enclosed ski slope in the desert, I try not to judge.

Did you know that the Japanese have an entire discipline of how to wrap up oddly-shaped objects in a large, square cloth? There are techniques for something large and round, like a watermelon; techniques for bottles of wine or long loaves of bread; techniques for carrying two books wrapped separately within the same cloth, etc. The cloths are called furoshiki: literally, "bath spread."

Here's a page showing some of the techniques, although the size is a bit small, and I can't zoom in... Still, it can also be downloaded as a .pdf file, perfect for printing out and posting inside a cabinet somewhere.

To me, the beauty of furoshiki is its wide range of possible responses to a wide variety of problems. It's flexible. It turns out that you can't effectively carry a watermelon in the same way you'd carry two books wrapped separately. And it turns out that someone already thought of that, and someone who is much smarter than I am when it comes to wrapping things up with cloth has already experimented and found the best possible way for everything.

Furoshiki also involves traditional Japanese textiles. You can drop quite a chunk of change on furoshiki clothes today; or, you can just get a big squar-ish cloth here and work with that. The second way seems more flexible to me.

I want to come up with a series of mental and emotional techniques that work in different situations. I want to develop range, as well as depth... so that when I'm confronted with problems that are different, I have the flexibility to come up with solutions that are different. Especially if they come wrapped in pretty cloth.

My favorite part from the first link I posted is this: 

The deal I posted about the other day is real -- the girls and I stopped by Bliss this evening and loaded up on gorgeous soaps on a 2-for-1 basis. I chatted with one of the owners for quite a bit, and he confirmed everything in the e-mail and then some.

If you are around Capitol Hill in the next 3 hours -- they're open until 8 PM --  or feel like navigating their confusing website and placing an order today, you can load up on gorgeous soaps for half price.

Costumes so far this year: 

Catherine as an antediluvian Bavarian Bolivian Peruvian barbarian auntie:


( Costume madness! )

I got this post from the fabulous domestinatrix . She relays something that is not-so-fabulous, but that could be redeemed by getting turned into even more fabulousness.

The e-mail that BLISS sent out to their mailing list:


10/29/2009

Dear Valued BLISS Soaps Customer;

BLISS Soaps has unfortunately fallen victim to a fraudulent business deal. Many local customers may recall a large soap, lotion, facemask and eye cream order that we were working on as they came to visit the store. The order was made, delivered and distributed to the Cruise-line executives ahead of schedule. Emperors Essentials, the company that commissioned BLISS Soaps to fulfill this contract fraudulently reversed ALL of the payments that were made to us. After researching the company, we discovered that the couple who own Emperors Essentials; Robert Friend, Jr., and Shao Mei Wang operate 4 charities in Gig Harbor, Washington. 1) National Association of Disabled Police Officers. 2) American Veterans Coalition. 3) (Childrens) Cancer Assistance Network. 4) Disabled Firefighters Foundation. All 4 charities are fictitious and an estimated $5,000,000.00 was raised for the charities and around 2 cents per dollar was used as assistance. If you hear of these in the future, DO NOT DONATE.

The devastating to BLISS Soaps came at such a time that we may not recover the funds in time to maintain operations.

In an effort to make this a win-win situation for both of us, we are offering this 4 day only Internet, call-in and walk-in special in an attempt to earn pre holiday revenue.

All orders over $50.00 will be doubled and the next 5 future orders over $50.00 will be given a $15.00 credit.

All orders received in the next 4 days will be filed and a VERY special future offer will be offered to you in our Dec E-mail.

ALL orders place in the next 4 days EVEN orders under $50.00 will be given the Special December offer.

To call in your orders, please call 1-206-322-SOAP 7 days 4-10 Pacific Time
Internet orders, please only order ½ of what you would like as we will simply double the order received.

Thank, you for your past and continued patronage and hope to hear from you soon.

Phil & Chuck
BLISS Soaps

Things I've (re)discovered today:

• Attempting to undertake a sewing project with a 4-year-old around is pretty much impossible.
• But it is certainly better than making any such attempt with both the 4-year-old and the 2-year-old around.
• Half a tablespoon of water, if applied to a child's face in order to clean off blueberry residue and/or encrusted snot, is an instrument of torture so vile that I must never employ it lest I cause permanent emotional scarring.
• Buckets and buckets of water, if lying around on the ground in puddle form swimming with mud and dead leaves, are a magical wonderland from which a child should never be removed lest I cause permanent emotional scarring.
• When in doubt as to whether to cook Dish 1 or Dish 2, cook them both. There won't be that many more dishes, and you will have as much food as you could possibly want.

And finally, that I'm more Lutheran than I thought, because although I didn't get most of the references in this video, I still thought it was funny, especially beginning around the 4- or 5-minute mark. Four years of St. Olaf, and then quite a few years of Unitarianism, mean I've heard a whooole bunch of verbiage just like this.

Last night, I attended ramonarjona 's yearly "Double Nine" party, at which we ate lots and lots of amazing Chinese food, and burned "hell money" for the spirits of the ancestors. I like fires in the fireplace, burning things, eating Chinese food, and -- probably most importantly -- evenings away from home so I can remember how much I love my family. aawhitewood graciously babysat the girls while I was away.

While telling stories about my time teaching English in China a decade ago, through Worldteach -- remind me to blog more about that sometime -- it occurred to me that although I intended to, I never actually ended up writing a post about Shandong noodles. So let me rectify that now.

Shandong province, where I taught English for 6 months in 1998, is a bit south of Beijing, but still far enough to the north of China to specialize in wheat noodles and wheat dumplings rather than in rice. Actually, Shandong's northerly position on the globe is one reason I chose that particular program to teach with. I wanted to be far enough north to avoid the giant bugs that are found in south China, Thailand, and most other places in the world. If WorldTeach had had a program in Mongolia, I would have chosen that. But they didn't.

I ate a lot of noodles and dumplings when I was in China -- more types of noodles and dumplings than I had ever known existed, and more types than I can easily find here now. One type of noodle that I can find is called "Shandong Noodles," although I never heard them called that when I was actually living in Shandong province.



The white characters read, from top to bottom, 山東拉麵 (Shan Dong lā miàn: Shandong Pulled Noodles). The Wikipedia article on Chinese noodles -- of course there's an article on this! -- is telling me that the lā miàn part is the origin of the Japanese term "ramen."

My favorite way to eat these is to boil them, then toss them with leftover pork broth from the last time I made pulled pork in the crockpot. (I chill it and de-fat it first.) I also include whatever random vegetables I have lying around in the fridge, and top it with hot sauce. Quick, cheap, easy, and not too inauthentic...

I used to go to Eddie Bauer about once a year and buy a pair of jeans there. They were adequate jeans, and they would last about a year, at which point I would go to Eddie Bauer and buy another pair.

Shopping for jeans is very annoying for me. I'm short, and even the jeans that are labeled "Petite" or "Short" need to have their cuffs roll up or need to be hemmed lest I end up wearing denim sleeves over my shoes. Second, I'm curvy, and although the jeans manufacturers have figured out that some women need more "give" in the thigh and hip and butt area, not a single one of them has figured out that then, you need to make the jeans go back IN in order to fit snugly around the waist.

The Eddie Bauer jeans were good enough. They were "almost" short enough, and "almost" went back in at the waist so that I didn't have a gap in the back of my jeans into which you could fit a good-sized watermelon. So I called them good enough and gave them my money once a year.

Today I went back and found that (1) prices were $10 higher than I remembered, (2) the cut was just not very good. I was in the jeans labeled "short" and "curvy," and they were just not good enough for $59.50.

So I left the jeans there, went across the street to Ross, and bought a pair of jeans for $13 and another pair for $17 that fit just as well.

I think this marks the end of my once-a-year affair with Eddie Bauer. Eddie, you and I have grown apart. You're less and less appealing and you meet fewer and fewer of my needs. I'm going to start seeing that nice boy Ross.

Life seems to be speeding up, and I'm not sure I'm up to the job of keeping up with everything... Maybe it's just Q4, which is always just insane at my workplace, or maybe it's that I continue to pack 9 days of stuff into each week, while wondering how I can find the time to cram in the contents for yet another day.

Today I've taken the wren to daycare; spent a few action-packed hours in the office trying to get as much done as possible -- no time to eat breakfast! only time for coffee!; left as late as humanly possible and hurried to catch the bus; made Andrew and the hypermuffin a quick lunch; driven us all up to Edmonds to meet a realtor and tour a house on behalf of someone who is out of state but who might be interested in it (asking lots of questions and taking notes); driven home; cleaned things up because people were coming over; spent a little time working from home, reporting bugs and launching a new Gift That Gives More; taken the 4-year-old along and fetched the wren from daycare; hosted 5 people for the evening (they're still here now); taken care of the girls and put them to bed; made banana bread; typed a year's worth of old monthly daycare reports into the hypermuffin blog (keyword Monthly Reports!) -- and I still have a ton of things to do before I can go to bed. 

Tomorrow doesn't look any less busy. After making a hot breakfast for everyone and taking the girls and tatterdamelion on our weekly grocery shopping expedition, I'll drop the wren at home with Andrew and take the 4-year-old to her gymnastics class, as usual. Then we're all pack up to go to a corn maze as a family, to keep Andrew's "corn maze streak" unbroken for yet another year. After he goes off to work from 4 to midnight, I'll probably dress the girls in their costumes and take them to Nikki and Ryan's Halloween party. Assuming we still have the energy. Which we probably will.

Sometimes I think about people who live in places where the pace is not so frenetic. People who can wake up slowly, do one thing (and one thing only) before making themselves a leisurely lunch, do another thing before their siesta, do another thing before dinner, and then have cocktails on the patio. People who spend time looking at trees, or sketching. People who have time to read books and think. Those people.

And I feel really wistful, wishing I had time to look at trees, think, or read something that's not on a computer screen. But at the same time, I know that if I woke up and had a whole lot less to do than I do now, I would get bored within a matter of hours. I'm used to this pace now, like a racehorse, and I'm not sure I could slow down significantly unless I had to.

A few weeks ago, the hypermuffin began asking me, "Got any grapes?" She said it with a peculiar zest, making me think she'd picked it up somewhere.

Today I found out where she'd gotten it from, as she surfed YouTube from one children's video to the next, ending up here:



As one commenter put it, "Its stupid at first glance, but on a deeper evaluation, that duck is an asshole!"