Call Me Julia

We're having hairy foot of squid for dinner, dear!

People, I have been too busy crock-potting the shit out of anything that moves to blog. I think we had the postman for dinner last night. If it has meat on it, I throw it in that crockpot, bury it in some sauce and voila! Did the person who invented the crockpot (I'm assuming it's Betty Crocker until someone proves me wrong) win some kind of nobel peace prize? Well, they should have.

To explain to someone who doesn't know me what a true miracle from God it is that I'm cooking is impossible. But if you're truly interested I suppose I could give you my mother's phone number and she could explain how I can't even make a bed so my making a brown-sugar-and-dijon-mustard-smothered pork roast is akin to Moses walking on water (it was Moses, right?). But hang up on her as soon as she starts getting on your nerves. Probably two minutes into the conversation.

The thing is, I'm now truly interested in this cooking thing. I want to try new recipes, I rummage through food magazines and scour online cooking sites. I don't even know who I am anymore. It's entirely possible I may wake up tomorrow, shave my head and join the Hare Krishna*. Because if I can find a love of cooking I can become a bald beggar at airports who helpfully informs people they will be going to hell. Really, it's that bizarre of a life change.

Even though crockpotting (is it a verb? it should be) is easy, per everything in my life, I at first had to make it hard. I would throw all the stuff in, press the button to cook it on "slow" and then sit there and watch it throughout the day. I'd marvel to the girls, "Can you believe this thing is COOKING OUR DINNER FOR US??? Have you EVER SEEN ANYTHING SO AMAZING???" And they would say something like "Caillou has a big red ball. Dora and Boots go night-night." So clearly they understand the importance of our new family member, our chef, our modern incarnation of Alice, The Crockpot. I almost feel guilty not paying it the going rate of $15 an hour for household help in the greater Chicago metro area.

My still one-reservation I have of my new passion is handling raw meat. I like my meat to arrive cooked (medium please) and prefer not to think of its origins on a farm or jungle or side of the road or similar. So I just kind of close my eyes, unwrap it and plunk it into the crockpot really quick while humming a pleasant song to divert my urge to vomit. My technique would probably make a good YouTube video if I was so inclined to let someone film me. Which I'm not.

So now that I've mastered cooking, I feel like I could do anything. Run a marathon. Solve world peace. Write a book. Too bad that damn Julie & Julia bitch took my idea.

*I know nothing about these people. I actually thought it was "Harry" Krishna before I Googled it, and wondered who Harry was and why he wanted bald followers. I'm not even sure they believe in hell. As a matter of fact, I know very little about religion in general, exemplified by the "D" I got in World Religions my junior year of college. If you are a Hare Krishna and I offended you, I will be happy to share a nice crockpot recipe to make amends. Except I don't think you eat meat. And I haven't gotten to the vegetarian section of my new crockpot cookbook yet...

Co-Conspirators

It was Miss Orange and Miss White with a Calendar in the Babies' Room

I think my children are trying to kill me. When they get in their cribs at night, and we finish up a ridiculously long bedtime routine, I think they get out a calendar and start conspiring. "When should we get sick?" one asks the other. "Well, Daddy will be out of town next week. That seems like a good time." The other then thinks about it. "Yeah, the next holiday weekend isn't for a while... I suppose we should get scary high fevers the minute he leaves and then pull something big the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend like we did last year." The other one nods. "I agree. The Emergency Room is so much more drama than the regular old doctor's office. Plus maybe someone who looks like George Clooney will be there."

WHAT THE F@#$???? Tragedies only occur around here when my husband is out of town (water pouring into my home displacing us for months anyone?) or it's a holiday weekend and our pediatrician is closed. And by "tragedy" I mean I am forced to be up all night. If you knew me in the real world you would know this is indeed a tragedy. People, I LOVE SLEEP.

So rocking a toddler last night from 2:00 am to 6:30 am was not my idea of fun. She had a fever and was not remotely tired. She wanted to chat. "Saw butterflies. Went down bumpy slide. Barney is purple. I like ice cream."

Umm, fantastic. Now go to sleep. "Don't like medicine. Want cherry lollipop. Watch Caillou!"

Right. Shoot me.

Still, as I sat there and rocked her, it occurred to me (like at hour three when I started feeling philosophically delirious) that that's sort of what motherhood is. Being there when they can't sleep but you're dying to. Singing "Jingle Bell Rock" 75 times in a row even though the holiday season has passed and you try to explain this but they don't get it so you are forced to belt out Christmas tunes well into January.

It's not always fun. It's probably not SUPPOSED TO BE always fun. And even though in the middle of the night as I prayed for sleep* and it didn't seem like a good time, I look back on it today and see that it sort of was. Getting to snuggle with her for hours while she rambled every thought she had in her little head. After all, I've had worse Friday nights. They usually consisted of a guy asking me if I planned to pay for half the dinner tab. And if he said things like "Butterflies pretty," it would have been a conversational upgrade.

That said, they better not pull that crap tonight. I need sleep. And to plan a girls weekend for Memorial Day so I'm out of town. I'm pretty sure my kids are scheduling something unpleasant.

*God's answering service must wonder why I only pray about sleep. ("Please God, let them nap today. If they nap today I will (fill in the blank with something I have no intention of doing.)" Just once I might confuse them and pray for world peace. Or maybe a new toaster.

PS-- Yes, the one twin is still orange. What can I say? The girl loves herself some carrots.

Beef Pot Roast a La Moi

I hope it doesn't scream like a lobster ...

I have some good news: The crock pot has been used! I have some bad news: I wasn't the one who used it! My husband made a delectable pork something or other. But in idly observing how easy it appeared, I was inspired. People, tomorrow I will be making a beef pot roast. Alert the media.

I informed my husband that if he would sift through and pinpoint a recipe (zzzzz) that I could potentially manage, I would give it a go. So he found one (which has considerably more than the two ingredients for which I'd hoped) and I went to the store and I bought the ingredients. We are half way there!!!

Here's the thing about grocery shopping when you're going to actually make something: you can't forget anything. As long as I didn't forget milk for the girls, every trip to the grocery store was a success. If you need an ingredient to make a specific recipe and you forget it, you're screwed. This seems like a lot of unnecessary pressure for an already unpleasant task.

I called my husband no less than four times from Jewel. Why he doesn't feign more meetings and let my calls go to voicemail is beyond me. I mean, I never call with good news or to exchange pleasantries. It's usually to a) bitch about something; b) ask a dumb question; or c) tell him if he doesn't get his ass home asap I'm going to blow my brains out. (This one is usually placed daily at about 5:00 pm.)

Here is one of our calls from Jewel verbatim:

Me: I'm in the meat section and I don't see four pounds of beef chuck roast.

Him: You have to go to the butcher.

Me: I have to go to Jewel AND a butcher???

Him: There is a butcher at Jewel. (This was said with a minimal amount of hostility or sarcasm. Which I appreciated.)

Me: I don't see a butcher. Are you sure there's one here?

Him: Very sure. (This was said with a hint of sarcasm but I ignored it.)

Speaking of butchers, we knew someone who knew someone who was a butcher and right after he was told he won a prize for selling the most shrimp that week he keeled over from a heart attack. Right there at the store. Seriously. I guess winning such a contest is more exciting than one might think.

Anyway, the recipe I've been tasked with is a bit complex and I wasn't sure if "new potatoes" were the same as "red potatoes" (the topic of the second of my four phone calls) and if there was really such a thing as frozen onions (call #3) and would the recipe be ruined if I got regular old beef broth because I couldn't find the low sodium kind (call #4). The answers: similar enough, yes and probably not.

So wish me luck! I plan on taking pictures. I'd like to "live blog" the whole thing like some bloggers who cover the Academy Awards but I'll probably need my full concentration and both hands. If nobody hears from us tomorrow, send the authorities. We may be dead.

Lunch Ladies

One of the girls' Christmas gifts was a chef's costume to go along with a play kitchen we already had. I like the Pottery Barn model but I protest a pretend kitchen that costs more than installing granite countertops in a real one. The online description of the chef's outfit boasted something along the lines of "your little one will feel like a gourmet chef at a five-star restaurant." Umm, then why does my kid look more like a lunch lady and less like a Bobby Flay?

Lunch ladies always freaked me out. They seemed to be conspiring to poison us with their partially saran-wrapped hands scooping out moldy concoctions of last week's leftovers. Modern lunch ladies probably wear specialized bacteria-fighting gloves that laser peanuts on sight while simultaneously weeding out every germ imaginable. But I bet they're still kind of scary.

The smell of cafeteria food always made me a bit nauseous. Which is why as a kid I always brought my lunch. This backfired only once when my mother mixed up my brown bag lunch with my dad's and I wound up unwrapping a big hunk of meatloaf in front of a table of 20 seven-year-olds. They began screaming that my mother had packed me "dog poop" for lunch. I would have gone hungry if not for the resident fat girl who gently pushed one of her Ho Hos in my direction. Only a mercilessly teased fat kid could empathize with such ridicule. (ARE YOU READING, MOTHER? 34 years later I'm still traumatized by your "innocent little mistake!!!")

Despite this minor mishap, I continued my brown bagging tradition until high school when I could sneak off campus to Wendy's every day where I always ordered a plain baked potato and Biggie Diet Coke. They were both 99 cents. The Wendy's version of the lunch lady would see me coming and pre-order "the usual" so even if I wanted to I couldn't order something different because it might hurt her feelings. One day I really wanted some fries, but there was my meal all rung up with the little woman behind the counter smiling at me broadly, like she just did me a huge favor by my not having to wait an extra 30 seconds if she had just let me place the order myself.

I always imagined this was the highlight of her existence, exercising her omnipotent ordering gift, so I couldn't very well squash her spirit with an alternate order. Also, I wasn't sure she was coherent enough to implement a rescinded order, which might necessitate a backlog of high schoolers eager to eat their lunch quickly so they could smoke some pot before returning to class. I certainly didn't want to be blamed for the Jeff Spicolis in my school not getting their afternoon buzz.

So my daughters running around the house looking like lunch ladies is a bit off-putting. I may see if Pottery Barn has chef outfits. They probably cost as much as tuition at Le Cordon Bleu, but at least the unpleasant flashbacks will cease.

Snowbound and Not Cooking

Yesterday we had what I like to call a "Jammies Day." This means the girls and I stay in our pjs all day long because we can't leave the house anyway so why bother getting dressed. (Yes, they're wearing Halloween pajamas and it's January. That is the least of my problems. Please note they are flipping themselves backward off the couch in what inevitably will someday be a trip to the ER while I idly stand by taking photos with my phone...)

I woke up yesterday morning and told my husband we were going to Pump It Up Party -- or as my girls call it, The Jump Place. It's one of our usual weekly outings. Please don't go there if you live in Chicago. We don't like crowds.

So anyway, my husband informed me there was a snowstorm and we likely wouldn't be going anywhere. I never bother checking the weather anymore. It's Chicago. I know the forecast: inhumanely freezing, not suitable for human beings. I don't know about you, but when I've just been informed I will be locked in a house with two screaming two-year-olds by myself for the next 12 hours, I start to panic. I'm not a kindergarten teacher, for crying out loud. I don't do crafts, I don't like to color and there's only so much Caillou a 41-year-old lady can take.

Incidentally, am I the only politically incorrect person who not only hopes global warming is real, but that we don't do anything to stop it? "Humans over polar bears" is my motto. It's a wind chill of about -1 right now and I wouldn't mind it going up a degree or 50. (Note to environmentalists: I kid. Sort of. It's easy to be against global warming when you live in LA. You're probably reading this from your back deck as your kids frolic on the swings. You just want the temperature to stay where it is because you had the good sense to move somewhere warm. Try living in Chicago November through March and see if you don't start trying to INCREASE your carbon footprint.)

Bottom line: we survived our day inside. We sang, we danced -- and when things got really dire --we put all the coins I've saved over the last year into their piggy banks for entertainment purposes. Which I kind of want back but it seems wrong to take money from a child's piggy bank even if it was never explicitly stated they could keep it.

Moving on... My new shiny crock pot is sitting on my kitchen counter staring me down, mocking me.

"Ya gonna cook something or what bitch?"

I won't be spoken to like that in my own home unless it's my children. And they won't know the word "bitch" for at least another week or so.

Here's what I've come to realize: I found a vessel in which I can (allegedly) easily cook food. HOWEVER, I must first pour over a cook book, find a recipe rudimentary enough that I can pull it off, drag my ass to the grocery store, buy the ingredients and then lug it all home. And then I still have to cook the shit! My solution: make my husband do the grunt work then I swoop in like Betty Crocker (is that who the crock pot is named after?), throw the crap in the cooker, let it simmer for 12 hours and then take credit if it is delicious and blame it on him if it rots.

Okay, so after I posted that we bought a crock pot, my mother called and asked if we really bought a crock pot or if it was just a funny story I concocted for my blog. Because everyone knows you mention a crock pot and hilarity ensues. WHO MAKES UP THEY BOUGHT A CROCK POT??? She thought it could just be a case of exercising my "creative license." People, presume what I say here is real unless I mention Daniel Craig is stopping by for a martini and a chat at which time I'll serve him a delicious meal I've just whipped up in my new crock pot. Because everyone knows I'm not really going to cook anything, even for Daniel Craig.

Part-Time

Why are there no well-paying part-time jobs for educated, somewhat intelligent women who happen to want to dial back their career a notch or two so they can tend to their children but still make some coin? I recently found one (it has "manager" in the title!) and applied but they haven't called. Granted, this was like 10 seconds ago. But I assume when my resume comes across the wire Human Resources calls an emergency meeting and shouts things like, "You call her! I'll e-mail her! Someone get in their car right now and show up at her house! Don't let this one get away!" People, my resume is that good. Or so it should be after paying TheLadders.com a hefty sum to make me sound much more impressive than I really am.

When I was discussing a return to work toward the end of maternity leave and indicated I didn't want to be in the office full time, they offered to let me work four days per week with a 20 percent pay cut. As the now-vindicated Wes from The Bachelorette said, "I was born on a Tuesday, but it wasn't last Tuesday." Because in those situations you might be working one day less, but I can assure you you're still doing the same amount of work, just shoved into four days. Unless they are hiring someone to work that one extra day. Which they never do. So I took my ass on down the road to an early, if temporary, retirement. And I'm thrilled it played out like it did and I've gotten to spend the majority of my time doting on my children who will either someday be better for it or wind up in jail. (I only intend to take the credit on the former scenario.) Plus, physically I don't think I could have worked even part-time, woken up multiple times a night for feedings and lived to tell about it.

But now two years later I'd be open to a part-time job with a pared down salary if such a job existed. And I know tons and tons and tons (okay, like three) other women who are in the same predicament. So the question is why aren't there more opportunities for meaningful, well-paying, part-time employment? The only women I know who seemed to find that negotiated a flexible arrangement with their employers following maternity leave. Or they are in a medical field like nursing that lends itself to part-time work. I hate blood. That wouldn't work for me.

My point? Well, I don't necessarily have one. That's what I like about not working. Nobody can come over to my blog and tell me to revise it because it's not to their liking. Well, they could, but I'd tell them to #@$% off.

In the meantime, I will sit by my phone, my computer and my front door waiting for the flurry of activity that surely this company's entire personnel department is going through right now to reach me.

Crack Pot

I announced to my husband that I am going to start cooking and evidently he took me seriously. Because he came home with a brand new crock pot yesterday. For those of you who don't know me, my announcing I'm going to start cooking probably means very little. For those of you who do know me, you might be on your way to the ER or pulling a Fred Sanford.

This desire to start cooking really isn't about a desire to start cooking. It's that if I don't we as a family will rarely have meals together. As it stands now, I am regaled with five-star meals at 8 pm most nights prepared by my husband after work while the girls are subjected to mushy purees, Steam Fresh peas and canned green beans at 5 pm. So I said I'd give being a 1950s housewife a try so we can all eat together sometimes. I'll get all spiffied up in a sleeveless shift dress and heels before my husband gets home, get the girls clean and house tidied up, greet him at the door with a martini and a hot meal on the table. This is the new me with minus the perky boobs and perky attitude:

But while perk isn't my thing, I am going to try to serve up a new pleasant attitude along with dinner. Which, let's face it, is going to be a far bigger challenge than throwing slabs of meat in a slow cooker. I've been fairly unpleasant to everyone but my children the last two years so it's now kind of a habit. I'm not even sure if I remember how to be nice unless it involves singing the Caillou theme song 100 times in a row. Surely cooking will be a piece of cake compared to the pleasant part.

Although I may be over-estimating my ability to learn to cook. The last time I really tried to cook adult food was around 1994. The recipe called for baking chicken at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. I was running late so decided to up the degrees to 450 and halve the baking time. I never heard from my date again so he might be dead from salmonella poisoning. I didn't really like him and I wasn't charged with a crime so all ended well.

So wish me luck in cooking and not killing my family in the process. I will photograph the first meal I prepare and perhaps videotape the response of the meal's recipients. I'll start brainstorming appropriate musical accompaniment. Perhaps something by Poison.

Choices

I choose to play with a ball.

I choose to sit in a box contemplating the meaning of life.

Today I went to the play room I love that blares kid-inappropriate music such as Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and The Commodore's "Brick House." (Must children under 5 know that Lionel Richie's idea of a "winning hand" is 36-24-36? No.)

I took the girls, but I would actually have a pretty good time there on my own as well. While the tunes are delightful, the parents are often not. Here is a (one-sided) conversation I witnessed between a mother and her 18-month-old.

"Emily, Mommy is giving you two choices. You can choose to continue crying and we will go home or you can choose to stop crying and we'll play for a while longer. Please think about it and let Mommy know which choice you'd like to make."

What new-fangled parenting manual advocates this line of dialogue? Listen, I'm not saying giving kids choices is a bad thing, or that tricking them into believing they are in charge of their own immediate destiny can't be an effective parenting tool. What I am saying is that if I hear you talking like that to a baby I'm going to make fun of you.

I myself talk to my children like they are beyond their years. ("Is it me, girls, or does Caillou seem to simplify the plight of the modern family?") So I'm really nobody to talk. But I try to have inane conversations with my children in the privacy of my own home so that nobody can mock me on their blog.

This particular child -- Emily -- chose to keep crying. Yet, there they were -- Emily and Mommy -- playing for the next two hours. So I'm not sure Emily learned much about choices and consequences today. But neither did my kids. I basically told them if they didn't shut their yappers while we waited for our car in one of those parking garages that insist on getting your car for you in exchange for a tip that they wouldn't get to eat the lollipop they always receive at this particular garage. (They were squealing "LOLLIPOP!" in a pitch that only certain breeds of dogs and mothers can tolerate.) They in fact didn't shut their yappers and you know what they ate all the way home? Lollipops. So my children are no better than Emily and I am no better than Emily's mother. Maybe just slightly less annoying. (Emphasis on maybe and slightly.)

But, hey, if we can't harmlessly mock each other's parenting styles how would we manage to feel superior to other mothers? And isn't that what motherhood is all about?

Butterflies and Ice Cream

I eat humans...

I desperately want my children to be having fun every moment of every day. I have no idea where I got the notion that children having fun 24 hours per day seven days a week equals being a good mother. If that were so I suppose Dina Lohan would be mother of the century. Expect several stints in juvy by the time the girls reach 13.

Anyway, on my never-ending quest to entertainment my children, I did two things this week on opposite sides of the spectrum that I never would have considered prior to breeding, nor do I particularly want to do them now. One kind of high brow and the other decidedly not.

1) We went to the Nature Museum. I don't like nature. So a museum dedicated to it holds no interest for me. The last time I communed with nature was in college when my philandering boyfriend dragged me camping for the weekend where he proceeded to inform me I was getting fat. Why a guy would decide to communicate that opinion to his girlfriend when there were no other people within a 5-mile radius is beyond me. It's very dangerous. Because I would have killed him had I not been deathly afraid of being left alone to be eaten by a bear. (Given how "fat" I was the bears were probably afraid I was going to eat them.) I probably shouldn't hold nature as a whole responsible for that weekend but somehow I do.

Anyway, the Nature Museum has a room with a bunch of wild GINORMOUS kamikaze butterflies that are on the attack. I didn't want to scare the girls so I pasted a frozen smile on my face the entire time but I'm serious, butterflies were diving at us like they were Tiger Woods and we were strippers. And sure, butterflies are kind of pretty FROM FAR AWAY. Up close they are a bug with long freakish legs that just happen to have colorful wings. Gross.

Me no likey.

2) Ate inside a McDonalds because they had a little play area. I didn't know customers actually ate inside McDonalds. People, they have a drive-through for a reason. Did you know they call it their "dining room?" Like you're at the country club or something. Anyway it was before 10:30 am so they were still serving breakfast. I asked for two cups of vanilla ice cream. The lady goes, "We're serving breakfast." (She emphasized "breakfast," in a Supersized antagonist tone.) So I say, "Oh you're not serving ice cream yet?" And she goes, "No, we are" and then looks at me disapprovingly. In other words, the lady behind the counter AT MCDONALDS was judging me for poor food choices. And would it be mean of me to point out she looked like she had eaten an ice cream cone or two in her life? (My ex-boyfriend would have been happy to inform her of this...)

McDonalds corporate headquarters is located in the Chicago area. I almost interviewed for a job there. And when I say "almost" I mean I sent my resume and they never called. But if I did have a corporate job with McDonalds I might send out a memo reminding the counter people that if they want to get uppity about what moms serve their kids they might want to go work at Whole Foods.

Regardless, Happy New Year people! I'd share my News Years resolutions but I don't have any. If it ain't broke... (Umm, need I say I'm kidding?)