Not Calm (dot com)

Christmas Eve

soph.baker, originally uploaded by Not Calm (dot com).

Merry Sickmas

It's probably bad to wake up Christmas Eve morning and have the first words that pop into my head be curse words, but the vague sore throat I felt coming on last night has settled right in and though I'm about to go finish making coffee in the French press, I am not sure I will be able to drink it because things are that bad.

Part of the cursing (the first of the f-words that started the string, in fact) was because I woke up at 6 on a day that was wide open for sleeping in till sometime totally crazy.  Like, maybe even 7:15.  Now that I'm up, though, it's alright.  I'm on the couch with no lights on in the house except for the tree.  I promised the kids I'd put colored lights up in the living room this year, but I didn't.  They wanted them on the outside of the house as well, which I really should have done since we live in a duplex and our neighbor put lights up on his half of the house just to make me look like an asshole. 

There is an impressive wind kicking up out there every few minutes.  It's still too dark to see much out the window, but the sky is just lighter than nighttime enough for me to see the silhouettes of the giant pine trees in the back yard rocking back and forth.  Maybe this will be the day that the dead palm tree (also quite tall) will fall on the house.  Then, maybe the kids and I could go live in a hotel (with room service and maids!) until they fix things up a little.  The property manager knows about the tree.  Last time I talked to him I brought it up and he SIGHED and said he knew and I asked him if it might maybe fall on the house and he was sorta not inspired to take any action. 

Coffee update: coffee is a go!  I don't know if I'll be able to eat much today, but so long as I can have my coffee in the morning and some booze at bedtime, Christmas will be merry! 

And, speaking of -- this is going to be my first Christmas without my kids.  Not totally without them, but I won't be with them on Christmas morning.  There is a part of me that keeps telling me (it's crowded in there) that if I were a good mother, I'd be moping about this.  Maybe even inconsolable.  But the reality is that I am totally looking forward to the plan, which is for all children to be out of my house by 5 p.m., wrapping and cleaning up and artful display of gifts to be completed by 8 or 9 (unless that bike is a bitch to put together), and then tacos and booze and coke with SG at his clean and warm house.  Also, he has never seen Elf, so I am making him watch it with me.  Christmas morning = coffee, bacon, and gluten free donuts with my man, which will make me happier than, well, than a kid on Christmas.  Then I will get back home in time to greet my babies in the early afternoon, and hope that they are not too strung out on sugar and CPGs (consumer packaged goods) to appreciate the gifts and celebration here. 

It's easy to hate Christmas.  Or, at the very least dread it.  It's one of those things that you work so hard and so long at, and stress so much over, that the actual day rarely lives up to the pressure built up beneath it.  And with kids who are overstimulated the chances of a smiling and tear-free holiday are slim.   But I have made myself a deal, and that deal is that I will ignore any Christmas freakouts and pretend that all is calm (and bright).  Maybe it will throw the small fry for enough of a loop to snap them out of it, should they have a downward spiral.  Or maybe things will go off without a hitch.  Whatever.  I will have fun either way, even if I am sick.  Even if Sophie tries to strangle me because Santa didn't bring her a cell phone, and he brought her brother one, that motherfucker. 

Merry Christmas!

Tree

tree08, originally uploaded by Not Calm (dot com).

One of my favorite memories is laying on the floor under the Christmas tree with my brother when the rest of the house was dark -- either early in the morning or before bedtime. (Or after, sometimes, if we were sneaking around.) We'd just look up, watch the lights blink and change the branch shadows on the ceiling. I still do that now by myself.

If it's just me doing it, it's probably not a tradition, exactly, but I think of it that way.

Your favorite holiday traditions? I'm looking for ways to make Christmas feel like Christmas. It hasn't for a long time, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm parenting it or if I'm older or if I'm so busy I don't have time to notice it until it's a week away. Eek.

Go ask Alice (and listen to what she tells you)

It's a long story (a boring one, otherwise, I'd be making use of it), but because of the way the hours got filled up this week, I was standing in my kitchen beating egg whites for Nate's birthday cake at 5:52 a.m. 

I make a fabulous chocolate layer cake from scratch that involves melting an expensive chocolate bar in a double boiler, a pound of butter between the cake batter and the frosting, and excessive swearing as I try and cut circles of parchment that will fit in the bottom of the cake pans.  (I know it's not that hard to do.  Apparently skipping kindergarten has come back to bite me in the ass.)

Even so, this year Nathan asked for the 1-2-3-4 Cake from Fanny at ChezPanisse; a kids' cookbook put together by Alice Water's daughter, Fanny.  It's a really simple recipe (butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk, baking powder, cake flour, salt) and we've made it so many times that the book will open to that page if you lay it down on the table.

This morning after I made some coffee, I started the cake batter.  I wasn't totally paying attention to what I was doing, because I'm finding that my brain is constantly busy crunching the list of things I need to get done before Christmas into the available hours I have.  It's not a good fit, and as the days go by I am getting more and more creative about when and how I will get stuff done.  I know I can pull it off, even if I don't know how yet. 

So I got the batter started and while I didn't use cake flour (I am leaving a trail of corners in my wake.  Get it?  Cutting corners?  Yeah.  Nevermind.) I DID at least sift the flour.  But, as I gently stirred in the flour and the milk, I realized that I sifted the flour after I measured out three cups, rather than sifting, measuring and then adding, which probably increases the volume of the flour by at least some, if not a whole lot.  And the batter looked not battery enough.  So, I grabbed the milk and put in just a little more.  As I did that, I had a moment where I recalled doing this exact thing before.  Not deja vu, but an actual memory of screwing up the cake batter.  I think it was in October for Lex's birthday, and I had to leave the house to pick up the kids.  The cake was still totally liquid after cooking for ten minutes over the time it says in the cookbook (that's happening right at this moment, too) and so I just shut off the oven and left it there.

When I came back, it was perfectly done. 

This morning, when I put the batter into the pans and into the oven, I looked at it and thought that it looked way too much like biscuit dough to make 1-2-3-4 Cake.  I thought that there was not enough liquid, even though I'd added milk.  But maybe sifting doesn't really make the measuring of the flour that much different, because right now I've got a couple of cake tins of not biscuity cake, but of soggy cake.  I really need to get in the shower (I'm like an hour behind schedule at this point) but the cake's not close to being done.  I'm turning off the oven, moving the jiggly wetcakes to the bottom rack, crossing my fingers, and already wondering how to fit in a trip to a bakery today.

Glutentalk

It's been about two years since I started stopping with the gluten.  Not quite two years, though; one of my favorite things about being in Barcelona in February 2007 was the pan con tomate (bread with tomatoes) and espresso I had for breakfast a few times at this little outdoor cafe near where I stayed.

I honestly don't even remember why I thought to start avoiding it, but I do remember that less than a week into my sad and pitiful breadless state, I felt way, way better.  Of course, it's not just bread that has gluten, but that was the hardest for me to give up.  Worse than cake, or cupcakes, onion rings, pancakes, flour tortillas, or pie, and maybe just a scootch more than real beer, I miss bread.  I miss baking it and smelling it cook, and I miss eating it hot out of my own oven.  Pass the butter (which I also don't eat anymore, much). 

So.  When I figured out that I felt better without gluten, the first thing I did was make a grilled cheese sandwich to see what happened.  What happened was a nasty headache, one that involved my entire head and felt suspiciously like the kind of hangover you get from cheap, hard booze; I was crabby; my fingers and face were swollen, especially my eyes; I was tired.  I just generally felt like shit.  So, I waited a little bit, making buttered toast for the kids' breakfast and cussing instead of popping bites of crust into my mouth.  And then, I did it again (with buttered toast) and had the same rotten symptoms. 

This cycle repeated for over a year before I really, truly believed that I had to stay the hell away from any and all gluten in the food chain.  I wanted it to be all in my head.  Badly.

And now, I'm pretty much mostly okay with this gluten free lifestyle.  It certainly doesn't hurt any that my very own handsome SG is also gluten free.  And?  He is a kickass cook who also likes to cook for me.  So, really, it's getting more okay as time goes by.

Still, though, I wonder if it's all in my head sometimes.  Or I did, that is, until now.  Yesterday my mom came and met me at work and took me up to San Francisco to visit a doctor.**  We left around lunchtime, so we stopped in at Whole Paycheck on the way up for a little lunch and a visit to the best gluten free shopping I've seen so far in the Bay Area.  (Laura! They have THE DONUTS.  Also? Hamburger buns!  SG and I are so totally grilling burgers this weekend.)  We got our lunch and sat down to eat.  I had turkey soup with wild rice, and as I was eating my mom said, Oh, can you do okay with barley?  And I looked at my soup and realized that I was totally not paying attention to what was in it.  Maybe this is the wild rice?  I said, sort of willing it to be the case.  I finished the soup and totally forgot about it.  We went to the doctor, and then I came home and grabbed my yoga gear and went to a Bikram class for the first time in forever.  (Dude.  It's HOT in there, but I miss it, bad.)

Around bedtime, I got hit over the head with a truly nasty and ferocious headache.  Weird, I thought, Why does my head feel exactly like it did the morning after that one time in high school when I drank the 7-11 Big Gulp cup full of rum after I caught my stupid boyfriend cheating on me with that skanky girl?  And why the hell am I so, so tired? 

I woke up this morning with the same headache, with my eyes swollen nearly shut, and with a general bad mood (which is still here).  And then I remembered the barley.  Or, as I lovingly am thinking of it at this very moment, the motherfucking barley.

I am guessing that this serves as something close to a blind experiment.  I didn't spend yesterday afternoon worrying that I'd had gluten and then get sick afterwards.  I ate it; I forgot about it; I got symptoms AND still didn't make the connection right away.  So I guess that now I am more convinced that this gluten intolerance is not limited to my brain.  That's strangely comforting.  I'd hate to think that I've been not having crossiants all this time for nothing.

** I had to see a specialist, and since the topic was sort of a big deal (a fairly major, and totally lifechanging surgery) my mom came along to help me listen and to ask questions.  Long story short; I am sick, but not THAT sick, and the surgeon told me that while I am actually the perfect candidate for the surgery, he was going to give me a pass.  At least for a few more years.

She knits, she fails

The yarn was so, so, pretty. 

It looked and felt like it was practically straight off the sheep, and as I knit I found little flecks of straw. (!) It sort of made me want to run away and be a sheep farmer in Wales, except I think that may possibly be the one way I could make things harder on myself right now.  But, you know, it was sort of idyllic, or something, to find the straw still in there.

 

Sadly, the hat that I made from the pretty, pretty yarn is almost the ugliest thing in the entire world.  If it were just a teensy bit uglier, then maybe it would sort of rock.  But, no.  It's just really, really, B A D.

 

The girls love it.  They call it the Clown Hair Hat and are locked in a ferocious battle over who gets to wear it to school first.  The loser is going to throw such a fit that I will have to let them duke it out only after I have opened my second beer tonight.

Now maybe (probably not) but maybe you are looking at the photo and thinking, Oh, well, it's not THAT bad.  Ugly, yeah, but you know, you could still wear it.  Maybe.

To that I say:

Wow.  Maybe I should unravel it and make a long, skinny scarf? 

And she stood to fly away

It's December, which, a) shocks me greatly, and, b) has me listening to The Decemberists.  I must not be the only one doing that; Last FM says they are all sorts of popular right now.

From last weekend:

We sat at a little table for two near the window. White lights wrapped up in the trees on the sidewalk outside made little bright dots on our wine glasses.  We held hands, and talked.  I kept sneaking looks at his gorgeous face, his blue eyes and thick dark eyelashes.  And, oh. my. good. lord. those shoulders. 

I'm still amazed by the incredible luck that let it be me sitting in this wooden chair across the table from him.  We first met nearly seventeen years ago, at our friends' wedding.  He remembers it; I try to, but I have an awful memory.  We never dated, but we used to see each other pretty often because while he was in school he worked in the produce department at the grocery store where I shopped when the boys were babies.  When I ran into him at the end of this summer, it had been eight years since I'd last seen him.  There I was at Trader Joe's after a long, 100 degree day on the soccer field.  I was wearing the ugliest dress I own, and I had, just moments before, totally grossed myself out when I reached up over my head to grab some salsa.  Seriously.  I almost passed out.  And then I was by the apples and pears and I looked up and saw him walking past.

I stopped him and we talked.  

He'd just spent the day on his motorcycle, riding on the coast.  He was single.  I tried not to blush.

I gave him my card and an awkward hug goodbye so he hopefully wouldn't notice how awful I smelled.

And then I waited for him to call me.

And, just like he said he would, he did.

After dinner on Saturday, we went to see the San Jose Symphonic Choir perform Handel's Messiah.  (not the singalong)  We walked up the steps to the cathedral just as the ushers were talking about closing the doors, sweeping right in to a spot in the back of the church.

I put my arm around him, leaned my head on his shoulder, closed my eyes for a minute.  I opened them to see an old man a couple of rows ahead, barely moving his head with the music in that way that only musicians do.  Have you ever noticed how a musician's body responds to music with almost imperceptible ripples, with fingers that subconsciously tap out keys and chords?   Every once in awhile, his hand would move up to his eyes to wipe away tears.  I was thinking about my dad, and how much i miss him because of distance and time and things that have happened the past year or so.  Far across the church was a man in the front row, leaning forward, his face near the violins, and he looked so much like my father that it was easy to let my eyes unfocus and just see my dad there, listening.

I only cried a little.  It was because the music was so, so beautiful.  Because I miss my dad.  Because I'm so silly-happy in love.  Because I'm way more hopeful than I ever expected to be ever again.  I am so lucky.